Stelis pristis Luer 1981 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name The Sawfish Stelis [refers to the flowers positioning on the inflorescence]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Cotopaxi province of Ecuador at elevations around 1500 meters as a miniature to just small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose tubular sheath below the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an erect, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, distichous, congested, 4.8 to 6" [12 to 15 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, inflated, acute, longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple flowers held perpendicularly to the rachis.

"Distinguished by the elliptical, petiolate leaf and a twice longer raceme of flowers that are borne in two ranks and facing the same side, reminiscent of many species in the genus Lepanthopsis. The tall, dorsal sepals point outwards on both sides of the raceme suggesting the blade of a sawfish. The base of the dorsal sepal is incorporated into the shallow cavity of the synsepal. The petals are semilunate and the lip is more or less triangular with an oblong, concave anterior surface." Luer 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing fide;

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009drawing fide;

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