Mormodes badia Rolfe ex Watson 1897 SECTION Mormodes
Flower and it's Pollinator, a Euglossine bee
Photos by Noble Bashor
Photo by © Mr. David Garibaldi/Kaele Orchids from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
LATE 
and 
Common Name The Dull Brown Red Mormodes
Flower Size 2" [5 cm]
Nayarit Mex, 884m elev., SW of Tepic. Epiphytic on Oak. Red variation see above.
Yellow variationNayarit Mex., 915m elev.,5klm West of La Liberdad, Epiphytic on Oak.
Brown VariationNayarit Mex, 884m elev., SW of Tepic. Epiphytic on Oak, found on same tree as the maroon variety.
This epiphytic herb is endemic to Mexico on the central Pacific coast in Nayarit and Jalisco states on decaying wood of oaks and other trees at elevations of 300 to 1700 meters as a medium sized, hot to cool growing epiphytic herb with ovoid to ovoid-fusiform pseudobulbs enveloped basally by several white, leaf-bearing sheaths and a has deciduous, plicate, oblanceolate to narrowly elliptic, acuminate leaves that blooms in the late fall and winter on a many [10 to 25] flowered, racemose, 18" [40 cm] long, ascending inflorescence that arises from the mid-section of a mature leafless pseudobulb and has showy, simultaneously opening, fragrant flowers, after all the leaves have yellowed and fallen off.
As the leaves begin to die back in the early fall it is time to withhold water and fertilizer and within a month or so after the bloom spike is initiated and the flowers arrive, then by late winter to early spring the new growth will arise denoting the time for watering and fertilizing to begin anew.
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orquideologia Vol 15 #2-3 1982 drawing ok; Flora Novo-Galaciana Vol 16 McVaugh 1985; An Introdution to the Orchids of Mexico Wiard 1987 photo fide; Icones Orchidacearum I Plate 64 Hagsater & Salazar 1990 Drawing ok; Orchid Digest Vol 58 No 1 1994 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 84 #2 2015 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 87 #1 2018 photo fide;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
