Stelis tyria Luer, Thoerle & F.Werner 2011 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name The Deep Purple Stelis [refers to the color of all the inflorescence and floral parts]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1850 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose, tubular sheath and 1 to 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, gradually narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on 1 to 2, arising through a spathe, at the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long, rachis 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long, deep purple, erect, distichous, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with dilated, shorter the ovary floral bracts and carrying deep purple flowers.

"This small species, apparently endemic in southeastern Ecuador, is distinguished by one or two totally deep purple, many-flowered racemes that surpass a narrowly elliptical leaf. The sepals are broadly obtuse; the proportionally large petals are transversely lunate; and the dorsum of the lip descends steeply, leaving the bar high above both the rounded anterior and posterior surface." Luer, Thoerle and Werner 2011

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Pap. Bot. 16[2]: 357 Luer, Thoerle & Werner 2011 drawing fide

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