Stelis pudens Luer 1981 SECTION Stelis

Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Bashful Stelis [refers to the sensitive flowers]

Flower Size ..8" [2 mm]

Found Loja, Napo, Morona Santiago and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 1900 to 2250 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing, shortly repent to ascending caespitoseepiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute to acute, gradually narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect, arising from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, subsecund, 2 to 6" [5 to 15 cm] long including the .4 to 3.2" [1 to 8 cm] long, bracteate peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute floral bracts and carries glabrous, sensitive flowers with yellow orange externally, light green and pubescent within sepals and a light yellow central apparatus.

"Distinguished by a small ascending habit with a dense raceme of tiny flowers that surpasses the leaves. The flowers are sensitive with the sepals barely closing over a proportionally large central apparatus when disturbed. The petals and lip are nearly as large as the sepals. A subquadrate, unclassified lip bears an ill-defined, "U"-shaped callus within the margins." Luer 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Phytologia 49: 236 Luer 1981 Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 comparison to S satyrica; Orchidaceae Stelis Sw A Compendium Duque 2008;

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

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

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