Stelis melanoxantha Rchb.f 1855 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Oscar Duque
TYPE Drawing of S caucae by © Schlechter
Common Name The Large Flowered Stelis
Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]
Found in northwestern Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador at elevations around 2000 meters as a medium sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 3 sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, oblong, obtuse, cuneate below into the narrowly petiolate base leaf that blooms on an erect, distichous, lax, 9.6" [24 cm] long including the 2 to 2.4" [5 to 6 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with cucullate-ovate, acuminate, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with a red to purple dorsal sepal, the synsepal red at the base, the lamina veryclear green to yellowish, the central apparatus is green to brown red.
"Distinguished mainly by its habit and its large, bicolored, bilabiate flowers." O Duque 2008
Synonyms Stelis caucae Schltr. 1920
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Bonplandia (Hannover) 3: 71 Rchb.f 1855
Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. Beih. 7:85 Schlechter 1920 as S caucae;
Figuren Atlas - Orchideenfloren der südamerkanischen Kordillerenstaaten Schlechter 1929 as S caucae drawing fide;
Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1970 drawing good;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 as S caucana drawing fide;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing good
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