Brachionidium longicaudatum Ames & C.Schweinf. 1931

:Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website

Common Name or Meaning The Long Tailed Brachionidium [refers to the sepals]

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in southern Venezuela and Roirama Brazil at elevations of 1900 to 2700 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing terrestrial with a stout, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3 imbricating, long-mucronate sheaths and giving rise to slender, suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2 long-apiculate sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, thickly coriaceous, fleshy, elliptical, acute, apiculate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and spring on a slender, erect, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with an apiculate bract near the middle and another at the base, .68 to .8" [1.7 to 2 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence and a long-mucronate, shorter than the ovary floral bract and carrying a purple?, non-resupinate flower.

"Although small, the rhizome of is stout and erect. The tails of the sepals and petals are as long or longer than the blades. The lip is acutely deflexed upon itself with na large, broad, flat, pubescent callus covering all the basck of the surface of the deflexed, claw-like base." Luer 1995

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Systematics of Brachionidium Luer 1995 drawing fide; Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol 7 Steyermark, Berry, Yatskievych and Holst 2003 drawing fide;

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