Dracula morleyi Luer & Dalström 1993 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Parviflorae

Flowers

Photos by © Patricia Harding

TYPE Drawing

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name Morley's Dracula [Dr Read, English Orchid Enthusiast and Director of the Los Cedros Reserve in Ecuador Current]

Flower Size 2" [5 cm]

Found in Imbabura province of Ecuador in wet primary forests at elevations of 1900 meters as a small sized, cool growing epiphtye with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, narrowly obovate, acute, acuminate, narrowly cuneate into the elongate, conduplicate petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and summer on a horizontal to descending, arising from low on the ramicual, 4 to 6.4" [10 to 16 cm] long, successively single, few flowered, racemose inflorescence with a tubular, shorter than the pedicel floral bract.

"Distinguished by the long-petiolate, acute leaves and a small, round, shallowly cupped flower with short, slender, blackish tails. The sepals are long-pubescent and intensely dotted with purple black within. The epichile of the lip is suborbicular and deeply concave with numerous, radiating, branching, complete and incomplete lamellae. Superficially similar to Dracula carcinopsis but D morleyi differs vegetatively in the acute, long-petiolate leaves. The flowers are similar is size and color but the round, shallowly cupped flower with the multiple black dots within as well as the transverse, deeply concave epichille separte it." Luer 1993

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV Luer 2002 drawing fide; Thesaurus Dracularum Vol 7 Luer, Escobar and Dalstroem 1994 watercolor/drawing fide; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------