Stelis mordica Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Biting Stelis [an allusion to the fancied appearance of the flower]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Cauca department of Colombia at elevations around 2850 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath on the middle third and 1 to 2 others below and about the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute apically, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on to 1 to 2, erect, arising through a slender spathe from a node at the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 1.2" [3 cm] long, rachis 5.2 to 6" [13 to 15 cm] long, erect, strict, secund, congested, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with tubular, subacute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple, glabrous flowers.

"This medium-sized, caespitose species is characterized by slender ramicauls, an elliptical leaf less than one centimeter wide, and one or two longer multiflowered racemes of purple, bilabiate flowers. The dorsal sepal is connate to the lateral sepals for nearly two millimeters to form the roof of the retrorse mentum at the base of the inflated synsepal. The petals are three-veined. The lip is a variation of type A with the bar forked near the middle, and a trilobed-truncate apex, a low, obtuse, marginal triangle being the middle lobe between obtusely angled corners." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 208 Luer & Escobar 2016 drawing fide

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