Stelis hymenantha Schltr. 1912 SECTION Stelis
TYPE Drawing/Photos R Solano © and The Herbario AMO Website
Photo/Drawing by © Senghas/Luer
LATE
Common Name The Membraneous Stelis [refers to the sepals]
Flower Size .1 [2.5 mm]
Found in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Hinduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador at elevations around 700 to 2200 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cold growing, densely caespitose to fasiculate epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and another below the middle and another about the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly obovate, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and fall on an erect, arising from below the apex of the ramicaul, dense , distichous, subsecund, .8 to 3.2" [2 to 8 cm] long including the .2 to .4" [.5 to 1 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously several to many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, mostly longer than the ovary floral bracts.
"Recognized by the peduncles of the inflorescence being shorter than .6" [1.5 cm] long, the long, acute-acuminate, wide mouthes floral bracts, the linear-oblong to linear-oblanceolate, .16 to .32" [4 to 8 cm] wide leaves the minute, green to yellow flowers [about .1" [2.5 mm] wide, longly cuneate-obovate, single veined petals that are attenuated to the base and a subquadrate to oblong-obovate, prominently cuspidate and apically incurved. Similar to S aprica but it is distinguished by the widely obovate, 3 nerved petals, the lip seems less excavated towards the apex and the tubular floral bracts are adpreesed to the rachis without a wide mouth. Solano 1993
Synonyms Stelis cuspidilabia Schltr. 1923; Stelis seleniglossa Schltr. 1923
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
The Orchids of Panama L.O. Williams & P Allen 1946;
Orchids of Guatemala Ames Correll 1952 drawing ok; AOS Bulletin Vol 27 No 6 1958; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1970; Die Orchideen 3 Auflage Bd 1 Sonderabdruck aus Schlechter Lieferung 7 385 - 448 Brieger, Maatsch and Senghas 1975 drawing good; ORQUIDEA (MEX.) 13(1- 2) Solano . DICIEMBRE 1993 drawing fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Steli of Exuador Part IV Luer 2009 ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Steli of Exuador Part IV Luer 2009 drawing fide; Diversity of Pleurothallidinae in Guatemala: An Endangered Orchid Subtribe with High Economic and Horticultural Potentials Edgar Mo Mo, Cetzal, Basu and Vega 2017 photo fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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