Stelis oscitans Luer 1996 SECTION Humboldtia

Drawing by Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website

LATE EARLY AND

Common Name The Yawning Stelis [refers to the gaping bilabiate flowers]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Chiriqui Panama at elevations around 1100 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose, tubular sheaths below the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-obovate, subacute to obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer, early fall and winter on a suberect, from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, flexible, subflexuous, to 2" [to 5 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously few flowered inflorescence with infundibular, oblique, acute, as long as to shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying bilabiate, purple flowers.

"Distinguished by the loose, few flowered raceme about twice as long as the elliptical leaves. The dorsal sepal is broadly ovate and the synsepal is deeply concave. The petals are proportionally large, 50% broader than the lip. The lip is semidiscoid, broadly rounded at the apex and flattened on the narrow dorsum with a small, shortly ciliate callus." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Lindleyana 11(2): 105, f. 34 Luer 1996 drawing fide;

Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;

Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing fide;

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