Stelis reniformis Luer & Hirtz 2004 SUBGENUS Nexiopus
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Kidney Shaped Stelis [refers to the petals]
Flower Size .8" [2 cm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces Ecuador in rainforests at elevations around 1400 to 1900 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by 2, large, loose, tubular sheaths and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a stout, arising through a slender spathe at the base of the leaf, rigidly erect, congested, secund, 6 to 12" [15 to 30 cm] long including the 1.6 to 4" [4 to 10 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with tubular, as long as to longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying dark purple, glabrous externally, microscopically cellular within flowers.
"Distinguished by the large, elliptical, thickly coriaceous leaves about as long as the stout, thick ramicauls. The long, strict raceme is borne by a thick peduncle. The sepals are elliptical and not widely spread in spite of the lateral sepals being free from each other. The petals are large, fleshy, convex and kidney-shaped. The lip is subquadrate with an acute apex and pubescent base." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo ok;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 Drawing fide
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