Stelis luteria Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by Duane McDowell and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name The Little Bathtub Stelis [refers to the concave synsepal]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations up to 1000 meters as a small sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and another in the middle third and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, subpetiolate leaf with a conduplicatte petiole that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising from an annulus just below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, distichous, 8 to 12" [20 to 30 cm] long including the 3.2 to 4" [8 to 10 cm] long, mostly successively many flowered inflorescence with tubular, oblique, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying bilabiate, purple flowers.
"Characterized by a large habit with large, eliptical, subpetiolate leaves that are far surpassed by a many flowered raceme. The purple, pubescent flowers are large and gaping with the margins of the erect dorsal sepal recurved. The center of the oblong synsepal is concave while the outer halves of both lateral sepals are convex, the petals re thick and reniform without transverse margins and the lip is shallowly concave and rounded at the apex." Luer 2002
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century Of New Species of Stelis of Ecuador Part One Luer 2002 drawing fide;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo good
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