Stelis lapoi Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by © Duane McDowell and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name Lapo's Stelis [Ecuadorian collector of species]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphtye with an erect, stout ramicaul enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early winter on a solitary, arising from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, erect, congested, distichous, 4.8 to 6.4" [12 to 16 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several, many flowered inflorescence with tubular, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying transluscent purple flowers.
The flowers of this long-petiolate species is similar to S neudeckeri but the dorsal sepals is 5 veineed and the petals do not have a transverse callus. S neudeckeri has a multiveined dorsal sepal with a transverse callus on the petals.
Said by Kew to be a synonym of S purpurea but I have left them separate for now.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 drawing fide;
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