ID needed (2): a wild orchid in Costa Rica

[Sarota Boy]

Please help me identify this miniture orchid. The flower size is 2-3mm. Stelis?

habitat: cloudforest
elevation: about 1,500m
annual precipitation: about 7,000mm
climate: cool and humid

Thank you for your time.

[WhiteRabbit]

[sbrofio]

stelis?

[Ray]

That was my thought, too.

[tropterrarium]

Yep, Stelis. Antonio Torre de Britto at Selby Bot Garden works on them.

[Sarota Boy]

Thank you for your comments and thoughts, all of you. I was hoping that someone would identify this orchid to the species level. I guess that is not easy.

[tropterrarium]

You could join the Pleurothallid alliance and post a message on the PA list-server. Or contact Luer/Britto directly. There are loads of them, and apart of the green books (aka icones pleurothallidinarum: I don't have them) not much out there in terms of refs. Not sure in which country it was seen, so can't comment on any other possible literature. Dressler (Orchis of Costa Rica and Panama) lists about 40 species, but only gives name, no description. Dodson (Orchids of Ecuador, vol 5) estimates 600-900 Stelis species to exist, with 428 reported from Ecuador. illustrated are about 30. His S. brevilabris is a pretty good fit to your plant, but I don't even know what the characters are to properly ID a Stelis. Extrapolating from Oberonia (my group, also with minute flowers), it requires better images to really know what it is: one flower full frame, preferentially z-stacked.

Good luck!

[Sarota Boy]

Thank you for your information, tropterrarium. I was checking the Internet Orchid Species Photo Encyclopedia, listing more than 500 species of Stelis. Many of them had no photos.