Dracula chiroptera Luer & Malo 1978 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Dracula
Photo by © Lourens Grobler
Photos by © Milan Vagner
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Bat Dracula [Chiroptera refers to the order that bats are in taxonomically]
Flower Size 6" [15 cm] long
Found in Narino department f Colombia and Pichincha province of Ecuador in cloud forest at elevations of 1600 to 2000 meters as a small to just medium sized, cool growing epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, subplicate, carinate, elliptical, acute, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate, subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring in cultivation on a stout, horizontal to descending, arising from low on the ramicaul, loose, successively few flowered, 12" [30 cm] long, racemose inflorescence and with tubular, much shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"This species can be quite color variable, but can be separated from Dracula wallisii and Dracula hirtzii which all have large, widely spread, densely spotted flowers by the sepals covdered within by a dense, short pubescence, neither like the long, coarse pubescence of D wallisii nor like the essentially glabrous sepals of D hitzii. The bivalvate petals of all three taxa are too similar to consider. The epichile of the lip of D chiroptera is suborbicular and concave with all the sides involute with multi-denticulate margins, very similar to some forms f D wallissii. The lip of D hirtzii is also suborbicular, but only the apical margin is involute, the sides being only more or less erect." Lure 1993
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Selbyana 2: 198 Luer 1978; Thesaurus Dracularum Vol 6 Luer, Escobar and Dalstroem 1993 watercolor/drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum X Systematics of Dracula Luer 1993 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 Drawing good; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 5 COS 1994 photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; Libro Rojo de Plantas De Colombia Vol 6 Primera Parte Saenz 2007; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010 photo fide; Orchideen Series C Band 74 Thiv & Worz 2012 as D sp photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing fide;
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