Stelis tridactylon Luer 1979 SECTION Stelis
TYPE Photo of S stella by Osacar Duque
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
Common Name The Three Fingered Stelis [refers to the flowers shape]
Flower Size .24" [6 mm]
Found in southern Colombia and Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 600 to 1500 meters as a small sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with an erect, stout ramicaul enveloped by a loose tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the subsessile base leaf that blooms in the late spring on an erect, arising through a spathe at the base of the leaf , distichous, to 6 to 9.2" [15 to 23 cm] long including the 2 to 4" [5 to 10 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with tubular, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts and carrying flowers with green suffused with red below the middle sepals, red glandular-celluar petals and a red-purple lip.
"This many-flowered species may be recognized by the free, narrow, similar, spreading sepals, green above the middle and red below the middle." Luer 1979
"Characterized by a large, elliptical, subsessile leaf and a simultaneously many flowered raceme more or less twice longer. The sepals are narrow with markedly recurved sides and widely expanded like three fingers. The sepals of the flowers low in the raceme are largest, to 04" [1 cm] long, but those near the tip measure only about .12" [3 mm]. The petals are small and flabellate and the type "A" lip is small and thick with the apex rounded." Luer 2009
Synonyms Stelis stella O.Duque 1997
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Orquideología Vol 20 #3 Duque 1997 as S stella photo/drawing fide;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 as S stella Drawing good;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing 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;
AOS Bulletin Vol 89 #11 2020 photo fide;
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