Stelis imbricans Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY 
Common Name The Overlapping Stelis [refers to the flowers]
Flower Size .8 [2 mm]
Found in Bolivar province of Ecuador at elevations around 2650 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, very congested, secund, 2 to 2.8" [5 to 7 cm] long including the .8" [2 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence and has infundibular, oblique, acute, as long as the pedicel floral bracts and carrying overlapping, dark purple flowers that all face the same direction.
"Closely related to S congesta but S imbricans differs in the very congested raceme of overlapping flowers all facing in one direction, shorter floral bracts, a proportionally larger central apparatus and a shallowly concave lip with a thin margin." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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