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Brachionidium imperiale, Orchidaceae
This imressive pleurothallid has a massive flower that is 11.5 cm high and 12 cm across when measured across the tips of the tails. The blooom is non-resupinate with the synsepal (joined lateral seapls) uppermost above the labellum and column.
Brachionidium imperiale is growing on the ground with long upright 2-5 cm distance between ramicauls (pleurothallid stems). Each ramicaul bears a small single leaf and eventually an elongated bud from near the apex as seen here. After pollination the seed capsule forms behind the flower, as shown in the upper part of this image.
The could forest habitat of Montezuma Rain Forest lodge at around 2,500 m elevation in Tatamá National Park is wet, cool, humid and buoyant.
Found in west central Colombia and Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 2000 to 2600 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing terrestrial on roadbanks or occasional epiphyte in shrubs with a ascending to erect rhizome enveloped by 2 to 3 distant, mucronate, tubular sheaths and giving rise to suberect ramicauls enveloped by 2, similar, imbricating tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, multiveined, contracted below into the petiolate base leaf.. more
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