Stelis vespertina Solano & Soto Arenas 1993 SECTION Stelis
TYPE Drawing/Photos R Jimenez © and The Herbario AMO Website
LATE
Common Name The Little Stelis
Flower Size .22" [5.5mm]
Found in Chiapas state of Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador in cloud forests at elevations around 1800 to 2300 meters as a medium sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 3 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, oblanceolate to elliptical, rounded, att enuate and conduplicate below into the subsessile base leaf that blooms in the late spring, fall and winter on an erect, arising through a spathe, distichous, 7.2 to 11.2" [18 to 28 cm] long including the 1.6 to 4.4 " [4 to 11 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously 20 to 40 flowered inflorescence with obliquely infundibular, subacute, slightly revolute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purplish-red flowers that sometimes have a green margin.
"Similar to S purpurescens but differs in the smaller bracts of the inflorecense, the slightly smaller flowers, the glabrous sepals the transversely elliptical petals and lip, the longitudinally sulcate lip that is not excavated to the apice of the lip. It is also similar to S chiapensis but differs in the somewehat larger plants the longer inflorecescence and many more flowered but slightly smaller, the seplas are 4 to 5 nerved, the petals are more transeversely elliptical and the kidney shaped to transversely elliptical, sulacate, and not excavated to the apice of the lip and at the base there is a slightly pilose callus." Soto & Solano 1993
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Las Orquideas de El Salvador Vol II Hamer 1974 as S vestita drawing/photo fide;
Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 1292 Dodson 1985 as S williamsii drawing fide;
* ORQUIDEA (MEX.) 13(1- 2) 19 Solano and Soto Arenas . DICIEMBRE 1993 drawing/photo fide;
Orchids of Mexico Hagsater etal 2005 photo good;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz, A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing fide;
Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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