To match the wet weather and drippy green world outside of my window we have one of our miniature cloud forests species today.

This species is new to 365 days of Orchids and is one of our smaller Stelis species and is found in Brazilian cloud forest above 1000m where it grows in shade. We explored this habitat during our school expeditions to Mata Atlantica rainforest and were very taken by the diversity of tiny orchids such as this species. The leaves are 4cm long and the delightful little furry flowers are produced well clear of the leaves.

Stelis is a large genus and we were particularly impressed seeing species in the wild covered in their tiny but beautiful flowers. Stelis omalosanthus has relatively large flowers for the size of the plant and they have tint hairs giving the flowers a furry look.

We grow our stelis in our Cool Americas section where they are kept shaded and wet all year to replicate their cloud forest home.

We have added Stelis omalosanthus to our online shop along with miniature cloud forest cousins Pleurothalis gracillima and Stelis stephensonii (below)