Stelis tortuosa Luer & Hirtz 2004SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY 
Common Name The ZigZag Stelis [refers to the raceme]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 2500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by a tubular sheath and 1 to 2, others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-oblong, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, flexuous, distichous, sublax, to 2.4 to 3.2" [6 to 8 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several, many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, much shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous externally and densely shortly pubescent within flowers, with the sepals yellow and a central apparatus purple.
"Characterized by the elliptical leaves about as long as the ramicauls and exceeded by a flexuous raceme of a small flowers; the sepals are ovate and densely short pubescent within; the petals are transversely ovate and single veined and the lip is small, with an obtuse, apiculate apex and pubescent towards the base." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIVPleurothallis subgenus Acianthera A Second Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2004 drawing fide
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