Stelis cavernula Luer & Dalström 2007 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name The Small Cavern Stelis [refers to the lip]
Flower Size .24” [6 mm]
Found in Carchi Ecuador at elevations around 3500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an erect, congested, distichous, 4.8” [12 cm] long including the .8” [2 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with acute, oblique, just shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"Similar to Stelis congesta but the type B lip is similar to Stelis lanata . A strict, multiflowered raceme far surpasses the elliptical lea. The sepals are ovate and three veined and the transversely calloused petals are also three veined. The lip is subquadrate and deeply concave anteriorly with the apex broadly triangular, The bar is deeply and broadly notched." Luer 2007
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007drawing fide
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