Masdevallia lata Rchb.f. 1877 SUBGENUS Polyantha SECTION Polyanthae SUBSECTION Successiviflorae Luer 2000
Photo by © Pieter C. Brouwer and his Nature Photo Website
Photo by Eduoard Faria.
Photo by © Daniel Jimenez>
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Wide Masdevallia [Refers to the broad lateral sepals]
Flower Size 2" [5 cm]
Found in Punta Arenas province of southeastern Costa Rica and Chiriqui Department of southwestern Panama [Venezuela? no = M sancta-fidei] at elevations of 100 to 800 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, narrowly obovate, obtuse to rounded apically, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on a suberect to ascending, arising from near the base of the ramicaul with a bract below the middle, round in cross-section, sublax, successively few flowered, racemose, 3.6 to 6" [9 to 15 cm] long, inflorescence and thin, half the length of the pedicel floral bracts.
"Easily identified by the long, slender, terete, ascending peduncle and successive flowers with broadly rounded, more or less compressed, approximate lateral sepals that are deeply arched beneath. The petals are oblong with a rounded basal callus and the lip is divided by marginal folds." Luer 2000
Synonyms Alaticaulia lata (Rchb. f.) Luer 2006; Masdevallia borucana P.H.Allen 1952
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 6 Dunsterville & Garay 1976 drawing not = M sancta-fidei; Orchids of Venezuela ; An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 2 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing not = M sancta-fidei; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1452 Mora & Atwood 1992 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum XIX Systematics of Masdevallia Part 1 Luer 2000 drawing fide; Masdevallia's in Kleur Vol 1 P M Oversteegen, Eisses & A P Sijm 2001 photo fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVIII Luer 2006 as Alaticaulia lata ; LANKESTERIANA 17(2) Bogarin, Oses & C M Sm. 2017 photo fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 as M borucana photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide;
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