Stelis habrostachya Luer & Hirtz 2013 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name or Meaning The Pretty Inflorescence Stelis

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Bolivar province of Ecuador at elevations around 1700 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle, and 2 others below the middle and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ovate, subacute to acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on 1 to 2, erect, arising from a node at the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle less than .4" [less than 1 cm] long, 2 to 2.8" [5 to 7 cm] long overall, strict, congested, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with purple externally, gray within with white pubescence sepals, dull yellow , glabrous petals and a purple lip.

"This caespitose species of SECTION Stelis is distinguished by slender ramicauls much longer than long-petiolate, ovate leaves. One or two simultaneously racemes of crowded flowers with pubescent sepals are usually a little shorter than the leaf, the petals are thick, concave and three-veined. The type A lip is semiorbicular, concave anteriorly with a superficial glenion, and with a single, rounded callus on the dorsum." Luer 2013

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 173 to 196 2013 MISCELLANEOUS NEW SPECIES IN THE PLEUROTHALLIDINAE (ORCHIDACEAE) Carlyle A. Luer & Lisa Thoerle drawing fide;

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