Stelis butcheri Luer 1981 SECTION Stelis
Photos by Alfonso Doucette Copyright © 2009, and His Flicker website
Drawing by © Oscar Duque
and EARLY
Common Name Butcher's Stelis [American Orchid Collector in Panama 1900's]
Flower Size .25" [6 mm]
Found in Costa Rica and Chiriqui province of Panama in cloud forests at elevations around 2000 meters as a small to just medium sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls with a loose tubular sheath near the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, longitudinally veined, elliptical, acute, tridenticulate, cuneate below into the channeled petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on 1 to 2, arising through a spathe at the base of the leaf, erect, subflexuous, progressively lengthening, 12 to 28" [30 to 70 cm] long, successively 8 to 12, many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"Remarkable for the gradually lengthening raceme of relatively large, yellow-green floowers with densely cilate margins, the hairs being white. Abot 10 closely packed flowers open simultaneously as the lower ones fade and the upper ones mature. Some inflorescence reach up to 1 meter in length.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Phytologia 49: 224 Luer 1981;
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;
Orchidaceae Stelis Duque 2008 drawing fide
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