Stelis calolemma Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis

Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Pretty Bracted Stelis [refers to the conspicuous floral bracts]

Flower Size .28” [7 mm]

Found in Morona Santiago province of Ecuador without locational data as a miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute to acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, lax, flexuous, 6.4” [16 cm] long including the 2.4” [6 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously several to many flowered inflorescence arising from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with acute, oblique floral bracts.

" S somnolenta is a medium-sized, slender, caespitose species and is related to Stelis calolemma Luer & Hirtz, but S somnolenta is distinguished by antrorse sepals that begin to expand beyond a short sepaline tube. Smaller flowers are bourne by very short peduncles hidden within proportionately large floral bracts, The lip is deeply concave below a deeply cleft bar. On the smooth, inner surface of the cavity a pair of thin, diverging lines descend from the cleft, giving the impression of a physical structure in two-dimensional photographs." Luer 2013

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera A Second Century of Stelis of Ecuador EPibator, Ophidion Zootrophion Luer 2004 Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera A Second Century of Stelis of Ecuador EPibator, Ophidion Zootrophion Luer 2004 drawing fide;

Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 173 to 196 MISCELLANEOUS NEW SPECIES IN THE PLEUROTHALLIDINAE (ORCHIDACEAE) Carlyle A. Luer & Lisa Thoerle 2013

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------