Stelis hercules Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Shaggy Sepal Stelis

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Cauca department of Colombia at elevations around 3150 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, repent epiphyte with a thick rhizome giving rise to erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and another 1 to 2 below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, cuneatebelow into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, arising through a spathe from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 4 to 4.8" [10 to 12 cm] long, rachis 2.4 to 3.2" [18 to 25 cm] long, erect, loose, distichous, mostly simultaneously, many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, much shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying yellow flowers.

"Vegetatively, this large, robust, repent species of the Central Cordillera of the department of Cauca, is indistinguishable from Stelis samson , of the Eastern Cordillera, but it differs with long-pubescent, instead of glabrous sepals, and a lip with a smooth, obtuse apex; a thickly margined glenion; and a convex, pubescent dorsum." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 199 Luer & Escobar 2016 drawing fide

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