Stelis discoidea Luer & Dalströem 2004 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Discoid Stelis [refers to the lip]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Pastaza and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 1000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, loosely, 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [3 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously 2 to 3, few flowered inflorescence arising through an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with broadly infundibular, oblique, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"Closely allied to S maloi and vegetatively inseparable with a loose, few flowered raceme, the flowers are superficially similar. The sepals are similarly broadly ovate and convex. Instead of being connate basally into a cup which snugly contains the central apparatus, the central apparatus is widely eposed. The petals are thin, suborbicular and convex. The lip is similar to the petals in size and shape, being shallowly concave with a rounded apex. The base is densely short-pubescent on the end." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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