Brachionidium sherringii Rolfe 1893
Photo by © Ti Raccon
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning Sherring's Brachionidium [English Collector in Leewards 1800's]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Grenada, St Kitt's, St Lucia and St Vincent in clayey soils on roadbanks in elfin cloud forests at elevations around 500 to 1400 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with a long-repent to ascending rhizome giving rise to ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 mucronate sheaths and each carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ellitpical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and spring on an erect, slender, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with a bract near the middle, 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long, solitary flowered inflorescence with an inflated, long-mucronate, as long as the ovary floral bract and carries a non-resupinate flower that can be transluscent white, to yellow to dark purple.
"Vairable in size vegetatively and the habit is commonly long-repent but more or less erect forms are not infrequent. The long-tailed flowers vary in size and color. The sepals are not ciliate but the petals are microscopically ciliate. The transverse lip with a central callus is similar to many others. Transversely subovate, broadly obtuse, minutely apiculate with longitudunally callous margins and with an ovoid, shortly pubescent central callus. The tips of the lateral angles of the lip are minutely uncinate but they can be simply obtuse on the lips of some clones. Small forms grade into Brachionidium parvum . Although the sepals of B sherringii are eciliate and the sepals of the small B parvum are minutely ciliate exceptions occcur. The 2 taxa could be considered merely vegetative and floral forms of one variable species." Luer 1995
Synonyms Brachionidium sherringii var. typicum Stehlé 1939
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora of Jamaica Fawcett & Rendle 1910 drawing not = B syme-morrisii; Flore Descriptive des Antilles Francaises H. Stehle 1939 drawing not = B syme-morrisii; Flore Descriptive des Antilles Francaises H. Stehle 1939 as B sherringii var parvum; Encylopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965 drawing not = B syme-morrisii; Flora of the Lesser Antilles Garay & Sweet 1974; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Systematics of Brachionidium Luer 1995 drawing fide; An Orchid Flora Of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1995 drawing fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014 drawing fide;
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