Stelis schistochila Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name The Split Lip Stelis
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Esmeraldas province of Ecuador at elevations around 700 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an erect, loose, 1.6" [4 cm] long including the .8" [2 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously 1 to 2, few flowered inflorescence with tubular, subacute, much shorter tha the ovary floral bracts and carrying red purple flowers with expanded, glabrous sepals.
"Characterized by the proportionally large flowers borne in a loose raceme about twice longer than the elliptical leaf. The sepals are ovate and multiveined. The transverse lip is most unusual with a curved, transverse cleft below the margin of the bar extending the entire width of the lip, suggesting a broad smile." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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