Dracula fuligifera Luer 1991 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Parviflorae

Photo by © Eric Hunt

TYPE Drawing

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Black Strewn Dracula [refers to the sepals]

Flower Size 1 1/2" [4 cm]

Found in Pastaza province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 to 2000 meters as a small sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender, ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, very narrowly obovate, acute, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate, indistinct, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and fall in cultivation on a slender, horizontal to descending, arising from low on the ramicaul, sparsely bracted, 1.6 to 2" [4 to 5 cm] long, congested, successively few flowered inflorescence with a tubular, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.

"Similar to the variable Dracula houtteana but the diffuse speckling of minute, sooty gray warts on the inner surfaces of the otherwise glabrous sepals. The epichile of the lip is concave with toothed, involute margins and a primary carina with fragments of others to either side within." Luer 1993

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Thesaurus Dracularum Vol 4 Luer, Escobar and Dalstroem 1991 watercolor/drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV Luer 2002 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; Australian Orchid Review Vol 69 No 5 2004 photo; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010 drawing fide; Orchid Digest Vol 75 #2 2011 photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide

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