Stelis tempestuosa Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Stelis
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Stormy Stelis [refers to the cold, wet, windy pass where the species was discovered]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 2700 to 3200 meters as a small sized, cold growing, caespitose to sometimes a thick rhizome bears the ramicauls a centimeter or more apart. epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and another 2 to 3 at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute to acute, gradually narrowing below into the indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, congested, distichous, flexuous, 1.2 to 4.8" [3 to 12 cm] long including the .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several, many flowered inflorescence with infundibular, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying yellow flowers with glabrous sepals.
"Characterized by the slender, ramicauls about as long as the narrowly oblong leaves that are more or less equalled in length by a congested raceme of very small, yellow flowers. The ramicauls are most frequently caespitose ut sometimes a thick rhizome bears the ramicauls a centimeter or more apart. The sepals are glabrous and elliptical with the laterals held forward. The petals are broadly subtruncate. The lip is cuneate, longer than wide, with the apex narrowly rounded and the base with a broad, cellular-pubescent callus." Luer 2004
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;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 drawing fide/photo fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009 drawing fide
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
