Stelis digitata Luer & Hirtz 2002SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Fingered Stelis [refers to the stigmatic lobes]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in El Oro province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 to 1850 meters as a mini-miniature to small sized, cool growing, scandent epiphyte with erect, ascending, prolfic, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, erect, purple spotted, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms summer and fall on an erect, peduncle .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long, from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, rachis 1.2 to 3.6" [3 to 9 cm] long, sublax, distichous, flexible, flexuous, simultaneously 3 to 6, several flowered inflorescence with infundibular, oblique, acute, longer than the ovary floral bract and carrying flowers with red-purple, glabrous externally, cellular within sepals, red-purple petals and a white lip.

"This species known only from southwestern Ecuador, is characterized by the scandent habit with proliferating ramicauls. The long-petiolate leaves are surpassed by loose, flexuous racemes of dark purple, bilabiate flwoers. The petals are triangular while the considerably larger lip is discoid and concave anteriorly with prominent lobes at the base beneath the elongated, protuberant arms." Luer 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002

Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 Drawing fide;

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