Stelis calantha Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Beautiful Flowered Stelis
Flower Size .2” [5 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador at elevations of 1000 to 1600 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-obovate, subacute, gradually narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect, slightly flexuous, subdense, 1.2 to 1.8” [3 to 4.5 cm] long including the .4 to .8” [1 to 2 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several flowered inflorescence arising from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with acute, oblique, shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"Distinguished by the elliptical leaves longer than the ramicauls that bear them and a congested, subflexuos raceme of simultaneous flowers that only shortly surpasses the leaf. The broadly ovate sepals are dull purple and the petals aand lip are yellow. The petals are thick with a distinct, transverse callus and the lip is shallowly concave and obtuse with the dorsal callus pubescent." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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