Bulbophyllum rupicola Barb Rodr. 1911 SECTION Micranthae Barb Rodr. 1882

Photo by Patricia Harding

Plant in situ Minas Gerais Brazil

Photo by © Ismael Nilton Vischi

Common Name or Meaning The Rock-Growing Bulbophyllum

Flower Size .32" [.8 cm]

Found in Goias, Serra do Caldas, Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo states of Brazil as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing lithophyte on exposed rocks and rarely as an epiphyte on mossy branches with a creeping, branching rhizome giving rise to close set, ovoid to globose, subtetragonal, shiny pseudobulbs carrying a single, erect, leathery, rigid, narrowly elliptic, semi-terete, deeply sulcate, acute, shortly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an upright, arching to descending, laterally from the base, to 6.4" [to 16 cm] long, many flowered inflorescence carrying simultaneously opening, resupinate flowers.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Iconografia de Orchidaceae Do Brasil Hoehne 1949 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Brasilense Pabst & Dungs 1976 drawing ok; Bulbophyllum and Their Allies Siegerist 2001; A Compendium of Miniature Orchid Species Gerritsen and Parsons 2013 photo fide

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