Stelis maniola Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Humboldtia
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name The Hobgoblin Stelis [an allusion to its being frightful in appearance]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Esmeraldas province of Ecuador at elevations of 750 to 800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing, ascending epiphyte with ascending, erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute to subacute, narrowly acuminate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late spring and early summer on a erect, from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, distichous, 1.2 to 1.6" [3 to 4.5 cm] long including the .4" [1 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with a purple dorsal sepal and whote lateral sepals.
Characterized by the little habit with an ascending rhizome bearing short ramicauls with longer, narrowly elliptic leaves and more or less equally long racemes. The sepals are connate basally into a saccate tube similar to that of S diallisa. The dorsal sepal partially reflexes upward to expose the cavity of the synsepal. The broadly triangular petals and minute, rounded lip are borne on the posterior wall out of sight. The lip is intricately sculpted with a pair of minute teeth on the margin of the bar above a pair of rounded calli." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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