Stelis nexosa Luer & R.Escobar 2016SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name The Tangled Stelis [refers to the overlapping, intertwined, branching habit]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Tolima department of Colombia at elevations around 3500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, densely repent epiphyte with ascending, slender, branching ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute apically, gradually narrowing below into the illdefined petiolate base leaf that blooms in the earlier fall a single, erect, from a node at the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle .4" [1 cm] long, rachis .8 to 1.6" [2 to 4 cm] long, erect, loosely, mostly simultaneously 6 to 10 flowered inflorescence with tubular, acute, as than the ovary floral bracts and carrying dark purple, glabrous flowers.

"This small species was found growing in great clumps of overlapping, branching rhizomes on the road embankment at a high altitude. A several-flowered, loose raceme of little flowers exceeds the leaf about twice its length. The sepals are obtuse and three-veined, and the petals are singleveined. The lip is a modified type C with a flat, elevated callus from across the base, then narrowed as it curves over the rounded bar." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

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

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