Stelis matula Luer & Hirtz 2002 SUBGENUS Nexiopus Duque 2008 Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Chambered-Pot Stelis
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations of 1900 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls enveloped by 3 loose tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, linear-oblong, obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, subtended by a spathe and arising through an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, subcongested, 2.4 to 2.8" [6 to 7 cm] long, secund, racemose, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with tubular, acute, shorter to as long as the ovary floral bracts carrying purple flowers.
"Unique in the genus with an inflated, pyriform sepaline tube with the lateral sepals parted on the under surface of the flowers. The saccate flower produced is reminiscent of a species of Dresslerella. The several, purple, globular, nutant flowers are produced nearly simultaneously in a loose raceme. The sepals and lip are very small, out of sight on the back wall of the sepaline cavity." Luer 2002
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of the Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of the Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 drawing fide;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo fide
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