Stelis regina Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by Earth.com Website
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Queen Stelis [refers to the size and Beauty of the flower]
Flower Size .6" [1.5cm]
Found in Carchi province of Ecuador in very wet, montane cloud forests at elevations of 1800 meters as a small to medium sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and another near the middle and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms on an erect, arising through a spathe from below the apex of the ramicaul, distichous, loose, 6 to 7.2" [15 to 18 cm] long including the 4" [10 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneous, racemose, several flowered inflorescence with inflated, infundibular, obique, acute, much shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying nutant, bilabiate, glabrous flowers with white suffused with pink sepals and a light yellow central apparatus.
"Similar to S purpurea but the ramicauls ae more slender, and the racemes of much larger flowers are shorter and more loosely flowered. The sepals are white suffused with pink, the dorsal sepal being .52" [1.3 cm] long,. The petals are large and broad and the lip is proportionally smaller." Luer 2002
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 drawing good;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 drawing good;
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