Stelis thecoglossa Rchb.f. 1866
Photo by © The Wilson Botanical Garden Website
Drawing by © Ames and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Box Shaped Lip Stelis
Flower Size
Found in Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama [Peru?] in dense, high montane forests at elevations around 2200 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 2 to 3 evanescent sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, oblong, obtuse, tridenticulate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms on an erect, arising through a small, acute spathe from below the apex of the ramicaul, distichous, loosely, to 11" [27.5 cm] long including the 1.2" [3 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, retuse, just shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple to brown green, glabrous flowers.
"Characterized by the narrowly elliptic leaf that is slightly larger than the tin ramicual, and much surpassed by the distichous, congested, thin raceme carrying small flowers with sensitive, ovate, obtuse and minutely pubescent within sepals. Diagnostic is the deep, wide cavity , the thin lip with comparitively thin margins and a concave surface without a glenion." Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003
Synonyms Stelis colioglossa Schltr. 1910
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Beitr. Orchid.-K. C. Amer. 93-94 Rchb.f 1866;
Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 8: 453 Schlechter 1910 as S coiloglossa;
Orchids of Peru Vol 1 Schweinfurth 1958;
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 as S colioglossa drawing fide;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing fide
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