centrated ammonia for about 30 minutes, then washing in cold 
running water for 5-10 minutes, after which they should be 
dissected submerged in water. If drawings are to be prepared, 
they should be made from the submerged flowers and floral 
parts. If the flowers are exposed to air on open slides, they will 
desiccate very rapidly and become distorted. Most of the Ste/is 
drawings published by Schlechter show such distortions. The 
plates attached to this paper were prepared from flowers sub- 
merged in water. 
It should be mentioned that the advantage of using the ammo- 
nia method is that after the flowers have been washed thor- 
oughly in running water, they can be transferred to FAA or 
alcohol and can be stored indefinitely. Such material will not 
differ substantially from actual live material preserved in liquid 
in the field. 
TYPIFICATION OF THE GENUS. 
When Swartz established the genus Sre/is, he explicitly stated 
that its characters are those given for Humboldtia Ruiz & 
Pavon. At the same time he also noted that the generic name of 
Humboldtia was previously used by Vahl. Therefore, Ste/is is 
merely a new name for Humboldtia Ruiz & Pavon, and the 
lectotype for it must be chosen from among the eleven specific 
epithets provided by Ruiz and Pavon in their Systema Vegetabi- 
lium. There are five Humboldtia species which are definitely 
referable to Ste/is, and of these only Humboldtia purpurea 
exhibits the characters depicted by Ruiz and Pavon on plate 27 
for Humboldtia; these drawings are part of the original proto- 
logue. The holotype of Humboldtia purpurea is in the herba- 
rium of Jardin Botanico, Madrid; duplicates are in the Reichen- 
bach Herbarium, Vienna, and in the Willdenow Herbarium, 
Berlin. 
The generic name Ste/is was conserved in 1905, although, as 
Stafleu has shown in Taxon 8:258,1959, the conservation was 
superfluous at that time. In 1929, Epidendrum ophioglossoides 
Jacq. was selected as the lectotype by Green in Prop. Brit. Bot. 
p. 100, and this typification was conserved in 1930. Unfortu- 
nately, Epidendrum ophioglossoides is based on Plumier’s poly- 
nomial of 1703, as well as on Plumier’s drawing of it published 
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