Brachionidium zunagense Luer & Hirtz 1995
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website
Common Name or Meaning The Rio Zunaga Brachionidium [a river in Ecuador]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Pastaza province of central Ecuador at elevations around 1900 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a slender, prostrate, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, imbricating, long-mucronate sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2 similar sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect to spreading, coriaceous, broadly elliptical-ovate, obtuse, apiculate, 5 veined, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, erect, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul with a long-acuminate bract near the middle, .44 to .6" [1.1 to 1.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence as well as an inflated, long-acuminate mucronate, as long as the ovary floral bract and carrying a transparent yellow, non-resupinate flower.
"Characterized by the small, broadly voate, apiculate leaves and small yellowish flowers with long-attenuate sepals and petals. Th uppermost middle sepal is larger than the synsepal. The petals are falcate, the lip is trnaseversely triangular and obtuse with thick, cellular-pubescent margins, unique in the genus. The central callus is well defined but relatively small and pubescent. The creeping habit is very similar to Brachionidium polypodium but the flowers differ in many ways, mist obviously the pubescet lip of B zunagense." 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;
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