Stelis angustifolia Kunth 1816 SECTION Chamostelis

Plant and FlowersPhotos by © Silleteros and The Pflanzen im web Website

Drawing Original Drawing by © Padre Pedro Ortiz Conserved at the Herbario de la Universidad Javeriana, Bogota Colombia

Common Name The Narrow Leafed Stelis

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1500 to 2500 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect ramicauls partly enveloped by 2 to 3, fibrous sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, narrowly elliptic, semi-terete, thick, subacute and tridenticulate apically, gradually narrowing below in to the petiolate base leaf that blooms on 1 to 2, erect, 4 to 5.6" [10 to 14 cm] long, racemose, distichous to subsecund, many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe and has large, cucullate-infundibular scute, imbricate at inception becoming distant floral bracts.

Often considered to be conspecific with S lanata but I, like Garay, consider them separate becasue S lanata is conspicuously pilose, has smaller floral bracts,and the shape of the flower and the labellum have a different form.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1970; Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz Duque 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------