Stelis rufescens Luer 2018 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Selbyana 32(1,2): 99 Luer & Vasquez 2018

EARLY

Common Name The Red Brown Stelis [refers to the color of the flowers]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in La Paz department of Bolivia at elevations around 2400 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 loose, tubular sheaths and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an erect, arising from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 1.2" [3 cm] long, rachis .8 to 1.6" [2 to 4 cm] long, erect, strict, congested, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, inflated, acute, with as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying red-brown flowers .

"This medium-sized, caespitose species is distinguished by small, fleshy, red-brown flowers in one or two multiflowered racemes about as long as the leaf. The sepals are broadly obtuse and three-veined; the petals are also three-veined and concave with a sharply demarcated, thick margin, without a transverse carina. The minute, transverse lip is concave within the broadly rounded apical margin, and below the obtuse, descending, central portion of the bar." Luer & Vasquez 2018

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Phytologia 49: 236 Luer & Vasquez 1981; Selbyana 32(1,2): 99 Luer & Vasquez 2018

Selbyana 32(1,2): 155 Luer & Vasquez 2018 Drawing fide;

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