Dracula simia (Luer) Luer 1978 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Dracula
Photo by © Eric Hunt
Photos by © Lourens Grobler
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Monkey-Like Dracula
Flower Size 2 x 6" [5 x 15 cm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador and Peru in cloud forests at elevations of 1000 to 2000 meters as a small sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheatsh and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, narrowly elliptial-linear, acute, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate, indistinct, subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter, spring and fall on a stout, subverrucose, arising from low on the ramicaul, sparsely bracted, horizontal to descending, 4 to 6" [10 to 15 cm] long, congested, successively single, few flowered inflorescence and carrying a tubular, shorter than the pedicel floral bract and carrying large flowers resembling a monkey's face.
"Distinguished by the well defined white zone in the center of the flower, otherwise red-purple in color, surrounds the toothed lip, the nose-like column and eye-like petals and the round toothed lip that give the impression of a monkey's face." Luer 1993
Synonyms *Masdevallia simia Luer 1978
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Phytologia 39(4): 229 -230) Luer 1978 as Masdevallia simia; Thesaurus Dracularum Vol 2 Luer, Escobar and Dalstroem 1989 watercolor/drawing fide; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; The Illustratred Encyclopedia of Orchids Pridgeon, 1992; Icones Pleurothallidinarum X Systematics of Dracula Luer 1993 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 Photo fide; Manual of Orchids Stewart 1995; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 68 #2 1999 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 68 No 4 1999 photo fide; Australian Orchid Review Vol 65 No 6 2000 photo; AOS Bulletin Vol 10 2008 photo fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009 photo fide; Mille et Une Mini Orchideees Roguenant 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; Orchid Digest Vol 80 #1 2016 photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 88 #4 2019 photo fide
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