Brachionidium elegans Luer & Hirtz 1986
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
Photo by © Anonomous
Photo by © Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name or Meaning The Elegant Brachionidium
Flower Size 1.8" [4.5 cm]
Found in southern Ecuador and northern Peru in scrub cloud forests at elevations around 2400 to 3000 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with a stout, occasionally branching rhizome enveloped by 3, scurfy, more or less shaggy, tubular sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2, slightly scurfy tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, 7 to 13 veined, elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer to early fall on a slender, erect, 1.4 to 1.6" [ 3.5 to 4 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence arising from near the apex of the ramicaul, with a loose bract near the middle and another at the base and an inflated, mucronate floral bract
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson & Escobar 1994 photo/drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XII Luer 1995 drawing fide; Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005; AOS Bulletin Vol 76 No 12 2007; Orchids of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photo fide;
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