Stelis alternans Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis Duque
Photo by © S Manning
Photo by © Patricia Harding
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Alternating Stelis [refers to the flowers in the inflorescence]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1300 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly linear-elliptic, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, arising through a slender spathe at the base of the leaf,congested, distichous, mostly simultaneous, several to many flowered, 4.4 to 4.8" [11 to 12 cm] long, closely spaced inflorescence with oblique, obtuse, shorter than the ovary floral bracts with alternating flowers all facing in the same direction.
"Recognized by the narrow leaves bourne by much shorter ramicauls and surpassed by a slender, congested raceme of purple flowers. Each flower is held 45 degrees from the rachis in 2 evenly speced rows with all the flowers facing in the same direction. Te dorsal depal is significantly larger then the oblique laterals. The petals are transverse and shallowly concave and the lip is shallowly discoid with the base sparsely to densely pubescent." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo fide;
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