Stelis picea Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Nexipous
Drawing by © Carl Luer
EARLY
Common Name The Pitch Black Stelis [refers to the flower color]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1400 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the midle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the slender petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, to 6.8" [to 17 cm] long including the .8" [2 cm] long, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with the sepals purple black and a black central appartatus.
"Allied to S juninensis but distinguished by a narrowly elliptical leaf that is longer than the ramicaul, but shorter than the erect, congested raceme of deep purple-black flowers. The broadly elliptical dorsal sepal is larger than the obtusely rounded laterals. The petals are more or less quadrate with oblique margins and only one vein is visible. The lip is cuneate with a shallowly concave, acute tip." Luer 2007
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 drawing fide;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------