Stelis punicea Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Beautiful Stelis

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Antioquia, Cundianmarca and Tolima departments of Colombia at elevations of 2600 to 2700 meters as a small sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a loose, tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse to rounded, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a single, erect, arising from a node below the abscission layer, peduncle 6" [15 cm] long, rachis 10 to 12" [25 to 30 cm] long, subcongested, strict, distichous, mostly simutaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acuminate, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying deep red purple flowers.

"Stelis punicea is a large, caespitose species with elliptical leaves that are subacute to rounded at the tip, and manyflowered racemes of dark purple flowers that are similar to those of Stelis purpurea . The floral bracts of the latter are long, acuminate and appressed to the rachis, while those of S. punicea are much shorter and diverge from the rachis." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 84 Luer & Escobar 2016 drawing fide

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