Brachionidium dalstroemii Luer 1986
Photo by © Dalstroem
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning Dalstroem's Brachionidium [Swedish Orchid Enthusiast and orchid illustrator extrodinaire]
Flower Size 2" [5 cm]
Found in Loja and Morona-Santiago provinces of southern Ecuador and San Martin department of northern Peru in cloud forests at elevations around 2600 to 3150 meters as a small to large sized, cold growing epiphyte with a stout, erect, straight, to 40" [to 100 cm] long, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, loose, long mucronate, sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2, similar sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect, purple beneath, coriaceous, 7 to 9 veined, elliptical, acute to subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on a slender, erect, .2 to .24" [5 to 6 mm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from near the apex of the ramicaul, with 2 inflated, imbricating bracts and an inflated, mucronate, longer than the ovary floral bract.
"Easily distinguished by the straight, thick, erct rhizome with comparitively small, alternating, distantly spaced ramicauls and leaves. The greenish flower is borne by a slender peduncle. The inflated floral bract engulfs the pedicel, ovary and the basal portion of the flower. The sepals and petals are eciliate with long slender tails and the lip is transverse with the edge bimarginate." Luer 1995
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 1994 Dodson drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Systematics of Brachionidium Luer 1995 drawing fide; Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005; Arnaldoa 12: 56. Beccara 2005 ; AOS Bulletin Vol 76 No 12 2007
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