Bletia purpurea. a. Flowering plant, b. Flower, front view spread open. c. Lip and column, side view. d. Lip, spread out. e. Fruiting inflorescence. Drawn by Gordon W.Dillon. From Correll and Correll 1982.

There may have been more than mere appreciation for Blet’s aid being shown by Ruiz and Pavón when they named the orchid after him. Luer (1972) noted: “Perhaps he [Blet] used the pseudobulbs in concocting potions, a practice still carried out by native people.” It may have been Blet who brought to the Old World the first information on these medicinal orchids. Now that the plants are so rare, most of that knowledge seems to have been lost along with the plants. One of the few other places where medicinal use is recorded for this terrestrial orchid is Roig (1945) who wrote that a handful of the whole plant was put in a bottle of boiling water, and “then used as an effective stomachic.” In several places in the West Indies, an infusion of the boiled bulbs was used to treat poisoning by ciguatera in fish. The split bulbs were considered good for treating wounds (Uphof 1968). Dried bulbs are not only used as the basis of a tonic, surely the application mentioned by Roig, but also as glue in Sonora, Mexico (Martin et al. 1998).