Brachionidium meridense Garay 1956

Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website

LATER THROUGH EARLY

Common Name or Meaning The Merida Brachionidium [a city in western Venezuela]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in northeastern Colombia and western Venezuela in cloud forests at elevations of 2400 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphtye with a relatively slender, prone rhizome enveloped by 3, imbricating, shortly mucronate sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2 similar sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, 7 veined, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later fall through early summer on a slender, erect, .4 to .6" [1 to 1.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with a bract below the middle and an inflated, oblique, mucronate floral bract and carrying a non-resupinate, light brown flower.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora de Venezuela Volumen 15 Parte 2 Foldats 1970; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Luer 1995 drawing fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing fide;

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