Stelis guatemalensis Schltr. 1899 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by Noble Bashor
Drawing by Fritz Hamer
Common Name The Guatemalan Stelis
Flower Size .08" [2mm]
Chiapas Mx., 1372m elev, Montebello Lakes area, epiphyte
Found in Chiapas state of Mexico, Huehuetenango and Alta Verapaz departments of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cartago province of Costa Rica, Narino department of Colombia, Carchi, Succumbios, Napo, Tugurahua , Chimboraza and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador and Cochabamba department of Bolivia in wet montane forests at elevations of 1100 to 1500 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with terete elongate ramicauls enveloped entirely by tight, scarious sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ligulate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf with a tridentate apice and dorsally carinate blooms in the summer on 1 or 2, arising through a spathe from an annulus, terminal, 4 to 5" [10 to 12.5 cm] long, racemose, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with thin, tubular, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and has closely set, brown flowers with a purpe central apparatus.
Similar to S pardipes but differs in the short pointed apex of the petals, shorter than S pardipes and the lip is subquadrate withthe apex triangular and acute, in S pardipes the apex is abruptly long-triangular and loger than the body of the lip. Also differing in the deeply concave synsepal without recurving margins, broadly obtuse, very shortly acuminate petals and a lip with a subquadrate body and an apiculum only half or less as long as in S pardipes.
Kew puts this one as a a synonym of S pardipes. I have kept hem separate for now.
Synonyms Stelis patula Schlechter 1912
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Bull. Herb. Boissier 7: 541 Schlechter 1899;
Orchids of Guatemala Ames Correll 1952 Orchids of Guatemala Ames Correll 1952 drawing good; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1280 Dodson 1985 drawing ok; ORQUIDEA (MEX.) 13(1- 2) Solano and Soto Arenas . DICIEMBRE 1993 drawing fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing ok; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009 Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009drawing fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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