Brachionidium elegans Luer & Hirtz 1986
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
Photo by © Anonomous
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name or Meaning The Elegant Brachionidium
Flower Size 1.8" [4.5 cm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces of southern Ecuador and Amazonas department of northern Peru in scrub cloud forests at elevations around 2400 to 3000 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with a stout, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, scurfy, more or less shaggy, tubular sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2, slightly scurfy tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, 7 to 13 veined, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer to early fall on a slender, erect, 1.4 to 1.6" [ 3.5 to 4 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from near the apex of the ramicaul, with a loose bract near the middle and another at the base and an inflated, mucronate, as long as the ovary floral bract.
"Distinguished by the suberect, stout rhizome enclosed by scurfy sheaths, a large colorful flower witha deeply concave, suborbicular, 4 vewined synsepal abruptly contracted into a short apiculum or tail. The shapes of the 3 veined middle sepal, the 3 veined petals and the lip are not remarkably different from those of Brachionidium andreettae or Brachionidium parvifolium
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson & Escobar 1994 photo/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; Orchids of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photo fide;
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