Brachionidium meridense Garay 1956

Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website

LATER THROUGH EARLY

Common Name or Meaning The Merida Brachionidium [a city in western Venezuela]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Santander deaprtment of northeastern Colombia and Trujillo state of western Venezuela in cloud forests at elevations of 2400 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphtye with a relatively slender, prone rhizome enveloped by 3, imbricating, shortly mucronate sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2 similar sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, 7 veined, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later fall through early summer on a slender, erect, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with a bract below the middle, .4 to .6" [1 to 1.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence with an inflated, oblique, mucronate, longer than the ovary floral bract and carrying a non-resupinate, light brown flower.

"The small, more or less upright, narrowly elliptical leaves ae spaced along the slender rhizome that creeps in loose, mossy humus. Although small, the transluscent, pale brown flowers with similar acuminate sepals and petals are nearly as large as the leaves. The lip is broadly transverse." Luer 1995

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora de Venezuela Volumen 15 Parte 2 Foldats 1970; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Systematics of Brachionidium Luer 1995 drawing fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing fide;

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