Stelis otara Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

LATER

Common Name The Large Earred Stelis [referring to the large petals]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Antioquia department of Colombia at elevations around 2050 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender, ramicauls enveloped by a clsoe tubular sheaths on the middle third and 1 to 2 others below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coricaeous, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later spring on an erect, arising through a spathe from a near the apex of the ramicaul, with no peduncle, rachis 4 to 8" [10 to 20 cm] long, erect, distichous, flexuous, successively few many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with a purple dorsal sepal, white lateral sepals that are light purple along the veins and a dark purple central apparatus.

"This large, densely caespitose species is distinguished by a flexuous, many-flowered raceme of large, bilabiate flowers that exceeds an acute, elliptical leaf. The dorsal sepal is five-veined; the partially connate, multiveined lateral sepals are antrorse to form an imperfect synsepal; the petals are thick, three-veined, and proportionately large, dominating the central apparatus. The lip is suborbicular and concave within a broadly rounded apex." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 211 Luer 2016 drawing fide

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