Stelis scaphoglossa Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Humboldtia
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Hollowed Out Tongue Stelis [refers to the lip]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1650 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath at the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-oblong, obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, arising through a spathe from below the apex of the ramicaul, distichous, 3.2 to 4.8" [8 to 12 cm] long including the .8" [2 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with infundibular, oblique, acute, longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying bilabiate, light yellow flowers.
"The unusual lip of this species is reminiscent of S fissurata. The anterior margins of either species are obtusely angled to either side of a deeply concave center of the bar. The raceme of S scaphoglossa is densely flowered with proportionally large floral bracts. The lateral sepals are connate near the middle into a synsepla that is broadly concave below the middle. The petals are hels closely around the column and lip so that none of the interior below the convex margins are visible." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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