Hormidium pygmaeum (Hook.) Benth. & Hook. f. ex Hemsl. 1881 Photo byEric Hunt, plant grown by OrchidMania

Plant and Flowers in situ Costa Rica Photo by © Wilfried Löderbusch

and

Common Name Dwarf Hormidium

Flower Size 1/16" to 1/2" [.5 to 1 cm]

Found in Florida, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Windward Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador in wet montane forests at elevations of sealevel to 1700 meters as a common, miniature sized, hot to cool growing, creeping epiphyte with pseudobulbs that forms dense mats, that blooms mostly in the spring, summer and fall on a terminal, very short, subsessile, subumbellate inflorescence arising on a mature, fusiform, bifoliate, dark green pseudobulb carrying 2, narrowly lanceolate, acute, conduplicate at the base leaves subtended by two sheaths and forming a spathe usually occuring with one to two flowers held close to the apex of the pseudobulb.

This species has the smallest flowers of the genus.

Synonyms Aulizeum pygmaeum (Hook.) Benth. 1892; Coelogyne triptera Brongn. 1834; Encyclia pseudopygmaea (Finet) Dressler & G.E. Pollard 1974; Encyclia pygmaea (Hook.) Dressler 1961; Encyclia triptera (Brongn.) Dressler & G.E. Pollard 1971; Epidendrum caespitosum Poepp. & Endl. 1837-8; Epidendrum monanthum Schltr. 1916; Epidendrum monanthum Steud. 1840; Epidendrum pseudopygmaeum (Finet) Hamer & Garay in F.Hamer 1974; *Epidendrum pygmaeum Hook. 1833; Epidendrum uniflorum Lindl. 1839; Hormidium humile (Cogn.) Schltr. 1920; Hormidium pseudopygmaeum Finet 1899; Hormidium tripterum (Brongn.) Cogn. 1898; Hormidium uniflorum (Lindl.) Heynh. 1841; Microstylis humilis Cogn. 1906; Prosthechea pseudopygmaea (Finet) W.E.Higgins 1997 ; Prosthechea pygmaea (Hook.) W. E. Higgins 1997

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; AOS Bulletin Vol 27 No 6 1958; Orchids of Peru Vol 2 Fieldiana Schweinfurth 1959 drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 29 #10 1960 photo ok; Native Orchids of Trinidad Schultes 1960; Orchids of the High Mountain Atlantic Rainforest in SE Brazil Warren & Miller 1994;

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