Stelis molleturensis Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Labiatae
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Cordillera Molleturo Stelis [refers to the plant location]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Azuay province of Ecuador at elevations around 750 meters as a small sized, warm growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a close, tubular sheath on the middle third and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer an erect, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, distichous, 3.6 to 4" [9 to 10 cm] long including the .4 to .6" [1 to 1.5 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, as long as to just shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple flowers with the inside of the sepals green.
"Related to S schomburgkia but characterized by an acute, elliptical, long-petioaltea leaf and a shorter raceme. The flowers are small, fleshy and nutant. The dosal sepal is convex and erect, the lateral sepals are connate basally, obtuse, minutely apiculate and held forward as a synsepal. The lip is concave anterioirly with the apex triangular and subacute. The bar possesses a glenion with a microscopic pair of appendages." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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