Stelis chiliantha Luer & R.Escobar 2017 SECTION Labiatae

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Harvard Pap. Bot. 22: 84 Luer 2017

Common Name The Thousand Flowerd Stelis [refers to the numerous simultaneous, minute flowers on the orchid]

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Santander department of Colombia at elevations around 2400 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-oblong, subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on 2 to 3, erect, arising through a slender spathe from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle .4 to .6" [1 to 1.5 cm] long, erect, congested, rachis 4.4 to 5.6" [11 to 14 cm] long, distichous, simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, subacute, just shorter than the ovary floral bracts.

"This medium-sized, caespitose species is distinguished by two or three densely and minutely many-flowered racemes longer than narrow, elliptical-oblong leaves. The sepals are fleshy ovate, subacute with the lateral sepals single-veined; the petals are subcircular and also single veined. The lip is minute, obtuse and shallowly concave below a faintly bigibbous bar." Luer 2017

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 22: 84 Luer 2017 Drawing fide

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