Stelis barbuda O.Duque 1997
SECTION Stelis
Photos/drawing by © Duque and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Bearded Stelis [refers to the tuft of short hairs that caps the wide glenion]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Antioquia department of Colombia in cloud forests at elevations around 2300 meters as a small sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect slender ramicauls enveloped by a larger, inflated sheath covering the middle third and a basal tubular sheath and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, oblong-elliptic, striate, subobtuse, tridenticulate, abruptly narrowly cuneate below into the long- petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, 6” [ 15 cm] long including the 3.6” [9 cm] long peduncle, many flowered inflorescence arising through a brown spathe at the base of the leaf with oblique, inflated, apiculate, imbricate, much longer than the ovary floral bracts.
Stelis barbuda may be recognized by the long, many flowered inflorescence with large for the genus, superposed red flowers arranged in 2 rows on one side of the rachis the opposite side carrying the large imbricate bracts. The spreading sepals and wide pubescent glenion distinguish the flowers.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Orquideología Vol 20 #3 pg 330–331 Duque 1997 drawing/photo fide;
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