Brachionidium ephemerum Luer & Hirtz 1995Type Drawing by © Dalstrom and The Epidendra Website

Common Name or Meaning The Short Lived Flower Brachionidium

Flower Size 1.6" [4 cm]

Found in southern Ecuador in scrub cloud forests at elevations around 2400 to 2900 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte in loose moss with a slender, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, imbricating sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2, similar sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect to erect, coriaceous, 3 to 5 veined, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, erect, .36 to .44" [9 to 11 mm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from near the apex of the ramicaul, with a bract near the middle and another at the base and an infundibular, mucronate, as long as the ovary floral bract.

"Disitnguished by the long-repent habit with small, erect, elliptical leaves and comparitively short peduncles. The spelas and petals are transluscent, minutely ciliate and long-tailed. The lateral angles of the transverse, bimarginate lip are acute and the callus is small and entire. Most similar to Brachionidium ecuadorense but differs in the slender, sepaline tails." Luer 1995

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Systematics of Brachionidium Luer 1995 drawing fide; Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005 drawing fide;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------