Stelis situlifera Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Humboldtia

Photo by © Lourens Grobler

TYPE Drawing

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Full shadeCool ColdWinter

Common Name or Meaning [The Bucket Bearing Stelis [refers to the deeply concave synsepal]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Loja province of Ecuador at elevations around 2600 meters as a small to medium sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped below by 2 shorter, loose, tubular sheaths and another larger in the upper half and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, loose, distichous, 4.8" [12 cm] long including the 1.6" [4 cm] long peduncle, successively single, several flowered, racemose inflorescence with oblique, acute, longer to just short of the ovary floral bracts and carrying green flowers with a rose colored central apparatus.

"Related to S purpurea but distinguished by the large petiolate leaf as long as the ramicaul. The several flowered raceme is more or less as long as the leaf. In the only specimen known the flowers appear to have been borne successively on a slender peduncle and rachis. The dorsal sepal stands erect and the synsepal is short, transverse and deep. The petals are not unusual. The lip is shallow without an obvious glenion." Luer 2002

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 drawing fide;

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