Epidendrum cochlidium Lindl. 1840 Photo by © Lourens Grobler

Common Name The Shell-Like Epidendrum

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in Ecuador and Peru in open sphagnum swamps and dense forests at elevations of 1500 to 3000 meters as a giant sized, warm to cold growing epiphyte or terretrial with stout, elongate stems enveloped completely by close, tubular sheaths that are scarious and leafless below and leafy above and carrying many, distichous, oval to elliptic-oblong, obtuse to rounded, basally clasping leaves that blooms in the spring and summer on a terminal, erect to arching, much longer than the leaves, to 28" [70 cm] long, densely to subdesely many flowered, rarely branching inflorescence with inconspicuous, lanceolate-acuminate floral bracts

Synonyms Epidendrum pulcherrimum Klotzsch 1854

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchids of Peru, Vol 2 Schweinfurth 1959; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 COS 2002