Stelis stevensonii Luer 2004 SECTION Stelis
Photo by © Ecuagenera Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name Stevenson's Stelis [American Past president of American Orchid Society current]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province Ecuador at elevations around 1600 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 tubular sheaths and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly obovate, obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, arising through a slender spathe with an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul strict, subcongested, distichous, 4" [10 cm] long, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, obtuse, shorter to as long as the ovary floral bracts and carries flowers all held in 2 ranks with light yellow green, glabrous externally, long pubescent within sepals, green petals and a purple brown lip.
CAUTION the lip in the photo seems too short to be this species so please use with caution Luer's drawing is absolutely correct!.
"Distinguished by a samll, caespitose habi with narrowly obovate leaves borne by shorter ramicauls. The inflorescence is regularly spaced, twoi-sided raceme of small flwoers with recurving, long pubescent sepals. The eptals are thin and shallowly concave and the apex of the lip is elongated and protuberant beyond a deep cavity within a cleft bar." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
