Stelis triplicata Lindl. 1859 SECTION Stelis
Photo by © N Guttierez
Drawings by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Three Plicate Stelis [refers to the plicate corners between the sepals - an artifact caused by the drying and hydration of an old wilted flower]
Flower Size .4" [1 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago and Sucumbios provinces of Ecuador at elevations of 1000 to 2000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others below and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, cuneate below into the sessile to subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus near the apex of the ramicaul, congested, distichous, 14" [to 35 cm] long including the 4" [10 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with inflated, oblique, acuminate, more or less imbricating, with as long as to longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrrying purple to orange brown flowers.
"Distinguished by a large robust habit and a long, congested raceme of large alternating floral bracts from which the flowers protrude. The sepals of freshly picked flowers are not wrinkled, unlike the type drawing which shows them. The sepals are transversely ovate with the dorsal sepal at least 7-veined and the petals are thickly triangular. The lip is sometimes oblong and protruding but often triangular and obtuse." Luer 2009
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*Fol. Orchid. 8: 2 Lindley 1859
Orchidaceae Stelis , 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;
Harvard Pap. Bot. 23: 175 Luer & Escobar 2018 drawing fide;
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