Stelis tauroculus Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Labiatae

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The "Bull's Eye" Stelis [refers tothe bright color of the central apparatus, probably the target for the pollinator]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Putumayo department of Colombia in cloud forests at elevations around 2300 meters as a miniature sized, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 1 to 2 others below and at the base, and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on a single, erect, arising through a spathe from below the apex of he ramicaul, peduncle .8" [2 cm] long, rachis 2.8to 3,2" [7 to 8 cm] long, erect, congested, , two ranked, mostly simultaneously, many flowered inflorescence with oblique, inflated, obtuse as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple, glabrous flowers with the sepals purple externally and dull gray within, the cerntral aparatus bright purple.

"This small, caespitose species is distinguished by the bright purple central apparatus in the center of a dull gray flower. The flowers are produced in two crowded, oppositefacing rows in a raceme that equals an elliptical leaf; the sepals are broadly obtuse; the petals are three-veined; and the bar of the lip is bigibbous without a glenion." Luer & Escobar 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 220 Luer and Escobar 2016 drawing fide

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