Stelis patens Karremans 2015 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Gaping Stelis [refers to the flowers]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago, Napo, Tungurahua and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 650 to 1700 meters as a small sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 close tublar sheaths and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute to subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect to suberect, peduncle 1.2 to 1.6" [3 to 4 cm] long, arising through an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, with an insignificant spathe, rachis 1.2 to 3.6" [3 to 9 cm] long, loose, successively 3 to 4, several flowered inflorescence with oblique, inflated, as long as the ovary floral bract and carrying flowers with transluscent purple, glabrous sepals, green, semilunate petals and a green lip.

" Characterizeed by a loose, several flowered raceme of non-resupinate flowers about twice as long as the leaves. The dorsal sepals is ovate, obtuse and five veined. The lateral sepals are connate to the apex into a curved synsepal. The petals are semilunate with a broad, thick margin, the lip is tsubtriangular, shallowly concave and rounded at the apex witha relatively large, rounded callus on the dorsum." Luer 2002

Synonyms Stelis patens Luer & Hirtz 2002 Nom Illeg [2 holotypes]

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002

Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 Drawing fide nom illegal [2 holotypes];

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Systematics of Stelis of Ecuador 4 Luer 2009 in Corrigenda;

* Nomenclature notes in the Pleurothallidinae: Stelis Phytotaxa 203 (3): 292–296 2015 Karremans

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