Stelis paradisicola Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Humboldtia
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Paradise-Living Stelis [refers to the location of the species in the famous Loja-Zamora mountain pass]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Zamora Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations of 2250 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others about the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and summer on an erect, arising from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, loose, to 4.8" [to 12 cm] long including the 1.6" [4 cm] long peduncle, successively few, several flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, just shorter to just longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple brown, glabrous flowers with a green central apparatus.
"Characterized by short ramicauls, longer, narrower leaves and a slowly successively flowered raceme with fruit and buds maturing simultaneously. The dorsal sepal is 5 or 7 veined, complete or incomplete and the veins vary in their origins and terminations. The laterala sepals are antrorse resembling a synsepal. The luneate petals have a thick, round margin and the lip is short and transverrsely cuneate-oblong. The dorsal callus continues forward into the glenion." Luer 2007
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 drawing fide
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