[3] Most species grow long, dense racemes of small to minute flower in diverse shades of white.

The genus Stelis was discovered with Charles Plumier, a French priest and botanist who was sent by Louis XIV, King of France, to study the flora of the Antilles in around 1690.

Later on, Nikolaus von Jacquin, a Dutch botanist who collected extensively in the Caribbean, published his findings in two separate works.

In 1760, he published the first one called Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum quas in Insulis Caribeis, where he described the same plant as Plumier´s polynomial (Epidendrum ophioglossoides).

Here, Jacquin describes a plant of his own herbarium with the same name (E. ophioglossoides)[4] Afterwards, on the “Expedición Botánica Española” (Spanish Botanic Expedition) sent by King Carlos III to study the flora of Peru and Chile, Hipolito Ruiz and Joseph Pavon complete results established 11 small plants of a new genus which they named Humboltia in honor of the renowned German explorer and naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt.

In 1799, Olof Swartz, a Swedish botanist, studied the genus proposed by Ruiz and Pavon and found that it had been already used by Vahl to designate a Leguminosae.