Octomeria grandiflora Lindl. 1842 Photo courtesy of Jay Pfahl.

Flower and Plant Photo courtesy of Arthur Skinner.

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Common Name The Large-Flowered Octomeria

Flower Size less than 1" [less than 2.5 cm]

Found at elevations of 100 to 2500 meters in Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil as a medium sized, wet forest, hot growing epiphyte that is mat-forming and is the largest in the genus both vegatatively and florally with terete below and laterally compressed above tufted stems carrying a single, apical, linear-lanceolate to narrowly linear-rhombic, acute, erect to arcuate, coriaceous-rigid, leathery, conduplicate below into the petiolate base leaf. It has a single flower arising in the fall through spring on a very short, fasciculate, several flowered, axillary inflorescence arising on a mature ramicaulwith papery sheathing bracts, carring the single flowers at the base of the leaf.

Synonyms Octomeria arcuata Rolfe 1909; Octomeria boliviensis Rolfe 1907; Octomeria ruthiana Hoehne 1937; Octomeria robusta Barb. Rodr. 1881; Octomeria robusta Rchb.f. & Warm. 1881; Octomeria seegeriana Kraenzl. 1892; Octomeria similis Schltr. 1922; Octomeria surinamensis Focke 1849

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 6 Dunsterville & Garay 1976; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 1 Dunsterville & Garay 1959 as O surinamensis; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 1 1969; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 888 Dodson 1983 as Octomeria surinamensis; Colombian Native Orchids Vol 3 COS 1991; Colombian Native Orchids Vol 3 COS 1991 as O surinamensis; Orquideas de la Serrania del Baudo Misas Urreta 2006 as Octomeria surinamensis;

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