Stelis drewii Luer & Endara 2007 SECTION Stelis

Drawing by © Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name Drew's Stelis [American orchid enthusiast and collector of species Current]

Flower Size .24" [6 mm]

Found in Imbabura province of Ecuador at elevations around 2600 meters as a small sized, cold growing, long-ascending-repent epiphyte with ascending-erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early winter on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, lax, 4 to 6" [10 to 15 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with translescent straw colored sepals and green petals.

"Characterised by a stout, creeping rhizome and ascending ramicauls that are much longer than the elliptic leaf. The loosely flowered raceme is longer than the leaf. The sepals are ovate and obtuse with the laterals distinctly smaller than the dorsal. The petals are thickly transverse and concave below a broad margin and concave below a transverse callus. The lip is thickly rounded with a broad, apical margin." Luer 2007

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2007

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2007 drawing fide

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