Dracula xenos Luer & R. Escobar 1989 SUBGENUS Xenosia TYPE for the SUBGENUS
Photos by Lourens Grobler ©
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Strange Dracula
Flower Size 4 x 6" [10 x 15 cm]
Found in Valle de Cauca department of Colombia at elevations around 2000 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3, loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, elliptical, acute, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate, indistinct, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and spring on a slender, erect, arising from low on the ramicaul, provided with a few distant bracts, 3.6" to 4.6" [9 to 11.5 cm] long, lax, successively single, few flowered, racemose inflorescence with shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"The long tailed, spreading sepals are only shallowly united and covered within by tiny red-brown warts. The petals are oblong and acute at the apex without any formation of valves. Only on the inner surface near the apex is a small zone of minute verrucosities.Al;ong the middle third of the labellar margin is a long, longitudinal callus. The lip is obovate without a clear demarcation between epichile and hypochile. The epichile is shallowly concave and filled with branching lamellae, the hypochile is cleft between erct, rounded sides." Luer 1993
Synonyms X Dracuvallia xenos [Luer & Escobar] G Meyer & A Doucette 2014
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * AOS Bulletin Vol 58: 10 pg 1011 Photo fide; Luer 1989 Native Colombian Orchids Vol 1 COS 1990 photo fide; Thesaurus Dracularum Vol 5 Luer, Escobar and Dalstroem 1992 watercolor/drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum X Systematics of Dracula Luer 1993 drawing fide; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 42 - 43 pg 2626 - 2762 Brieger 2001; Libro Rojo de Plantas De Colombia Vol 6 Primera Parte Saenz 2007; Orchid Digest Vol 72 No 4 2008 photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 as Dracuvallia xenos photo fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing/photo fide;
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