Stelis angustifolia Kunth 1816 SECTION Stelis
Photos by © Silleteros and The Pflanzen im web Website
Original Drawing by © Padre Pedro Ortiz Conserved at the Herbario de la Universidad Javeriana, Bogota Colombia
Common Name The Narrow Leafed Stelis
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1500 to 2500 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect ramicauls partly enveloped by 2 to 3, fibrous sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, narrowly elliptic, semi-terete, thick, subacute and tridenticulate apically, gradually narrowing below in to the petiolate base leaf that blooms on 1 to 2, erect, 4 to 5.6" [10 to 14 cm] long, racemose, distichous to subsecund, many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe and has large, cucullate-infundibular scute, imbricate at inception becoming distant, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying yellow or purple flowers.
Often considered to be conspecific with S lanata but I, like Garay, consider them separate becasue S lanata is conspicuously pilose, has smaller floral bracts,and the shape of the flower and the labellum have a different form.
"Although Stelis angustifolia has been previously illustrated as the synonym Stelis lanata Lindl., the closed flower is inadequate for identification. Stelis angustifolia is characterized by one to three densely many-flowered racemes that are about as long as, or shortly longer than narrow, elliptical leaves; variously pubescent, three-veined sepals; and three-veined petals. Most distinctive is the lip with a deeply hollowed out cavity beneath a widely cleft bar. Stelis colombiana Ames from the southern part of the Western Cordillera, is similar to Stelis angustifolia. With similar, pubescent, three-veined sepals it is distinguished from the later by broader leaves up to two centimeters wide, slightly smaller flowers, and a lip with a simple, cleft bar and cavity." Luer 2018
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1970;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz Duque 2008;
Harvard Pap. Bot. 23: 19 Luer & Escobar 2018 Drawing fide
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