Orchid Species: Epidendrum erica-moroniae

ORIGIN: Found in northern and southern Peru and into Bolivia on the Amazon slope of the Cordillera Oriental in dry scrub forest at elevations of 1700 to 2300 meters.

DESCRIPTION: Small sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with simple, short, cane-like, basally terete, laterally compressed towards the apex, thin stems enveloped basally by non-foliar, tubular, minutely striated, scarious sheaths and carrying 4 to 7, all along the stem, sub-spreading, straight, linear, acute, coriaceous, slightly revolute, margin entire leaves that blooms in the late fall through spring on a terminal, paniculate, erect, peduncle 2.8 to 3.4 [7 to 8.5 cm] long, thin, ancipitous, fractiflex, 2 to 4 bracts all along, tubular, ancipitous basally, conduplicate in the spical half, apically subacute bracts, rachis thin, terete, 5 to 5.2 [12.5 to 13 cm] long, with 4 to 6 branches each .6 to 1.4 [1.5 to 3.5 cm] long, each branch perpendicular to the main rachis, each branch 8 to 17 flowered, simultaneously [exept for some of the apical branches] 30 to 70 flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the ovary, narrowly triangular, long-acuminate, embracing floral bracts and carrying small, membraneous, lip always facing the rachis, greenish brown, turning purple pink flowers with the apex of the column purple.

FLOWER SIZE: 0.4 inches [1 cm] -- information provided by Jay Pfahl, author of the Internet Orchid Species Encyclopedia (IOSPE).