Stelis scitula Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by Carl Luer
LATER 
EARLY
Common Name The Pretty Stelis
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1680 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caspitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a large, loose tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others below and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to subacute, narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus at the apex of the ramicaul, congested, secund, 4.8 to 5.6" [12 to 14 cm] long including the 1.2 to 2.4" [3 to 6 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with infundibular, inflated, oblique, acute, slightly shorter to slightly longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying yellow flowers with cellular-papillose sepals.
" This pretty yellow flowered species is distinguished by elliptical leaves surpassed by the raceme, but considerably longer than the ramicauls. The floral bracts are consicuous; the sepals are broad and five veined and the transverse, three veined petals are without a transverse callus. The length of the round lip is shprt, but deep with an elongateed glenion extending ver the dorsum, similar to the lip of V viridibrunnea." Luer 2007
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 drawing fide;
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