Brachionidium stellare Luer & Hirtz 1995

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website

Common Name or Meaning The Star-Like Brachionidium [refers to the flower shape]

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province of southern Ecuador in moss in cloud forests at elevations around 2150 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing terrestrial with an erect to suberect, slender, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, loose, long-mucronate sheaths and giving rise to suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, 7 veined, contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a capillary, erect, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with a loose bract below the middle and another at the base, .6 to .8" [1.5 to 2 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence with a long-mucronate, as long as the ovary floral bract and carrying a translucent purple, nonresupinate flower.

"Characterized by the small habit with small, elliptical leaves. It bears a purple flower comparitively large for the size of the plant. The minutely ciliate seplas and petals are acuminate with slender tails about as long as the blades. The lip is transversely ovate with proportionally large, crescent-shaped concavities within eachside of the bimarginate lip. Of the 6 pollina attached to a single viscidium tow of the pollina are half the size of the others." 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; Orchids of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photos hmm;

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