Benzingia caudata (Ackerman) Dressler 2005 Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding

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Common Name or Meaning The Tailed Benzingia

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found as a pendant growing, warm to cool growing epiphyte in Ecuador and Peru at elevations of 100 to 1500 meters in wet, shady, cloud forests on tree trunks as a small sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte that has a short rhizome with no pseudobulbs and a short stem enveloped basally by several distichous leaf sheaths with the basal ones short and the others longer with linear, conduplicate towards the base leaves that blooms in the late spring and summer on a pendant and then erect, 3" [7.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from the upper leaf axils and having 3 short, tubular bracts.

Synonyms Ackermania caudata (Ackerman) Dodson & R. Escobar 1993; *Chondrorhyncha caudata Ackerman 1981; Stenia caudata (Ackerman) Dodson & D.E. Benn. 1989

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 413 Dodson 1982 as Chondrorhyncha caudata; Ecuadorian Native Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1994 as Ackermania caudata,