Stelis sparsiflora Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Humboldtia
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Sparse Flowered Stelis
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 2000 to 2800 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, arising through a spathe from below the apex of the ramicaul, distichous, loosely, to 8.4" [21 cm] long including the 2" [5 cm] long peduncle, probably mostly simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with the dorsal sepal light lavender, the laterals light yellow and the central apparatus light green.
"This species has a distinctly loose inflorescence and is similar to S alpina and S cajanumae with the abruptly concave chin in the center of the synsepal, but differs from them by the thickened, obtuse, incurves apex of the lip." 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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