Stelis prolificosa Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE
EARLY
Common Name The Prolific Stelis [refers to the prolific habit]
Flower Size .24" [6 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 2900 meters as a small sized, prolific, cold growing, prolific epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by tubular sheath near the middle and 2 sheaths about the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late fall and early winter on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, flexuous, sublax, to 4.8" [to 12 cm] long including the .8 to 1.6" [2 to 4 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter to a bit longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying dark red flowers.
Luer described this species on pg 45 of Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX Luer 2007 as Stelis prolificosa but in the figure #280 he mislabeled the drawing as S prolifica. I assure you that it depicts S prolificosa and is the type drawing for the species.
"Characetrized by a prolific habit, a habit shared by fwe others in the genus. The flowers not remarkably diostinct are borne in a many flowered, flexuoue raceme with prominent floral bracts that exceed the leaf in length. The broadly ovate sepals are narrowly margined; the transverse petals are three veined and the tpe" A" lip is concave with a thin, obtuse amrgin and a singe dorsal callus." 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 as S prolifica spalm drawing fide;
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