Dracula christineana Luer 2002 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Dracula
Photo by © Dracula Species Europe Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning Christina's Dracula [Mrs Chowning American Orchid Enthusiast Current]
Flower Size 2" [5 cm]
Found in southern Ecuador without locality as a small sized, cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, narrowly obovate, acute, indistinctly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a congested, successively few flowered, racemose, 4" [10 cm] long inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul with a tubular, shorter than the pedicel floral bract.
"The small flowers marked with brown below the middle are reminiscent of variations of Dracula erythrochaete but the small, deeply concave epichile with numerous radiating veins is distinctive. Except for the smaller size, the lip is similar to Dracula lafleurii . The sepals of the latter are much larger and acuminate into tails, while the sepals of D christineana are transverse and abruptly contracted into tails." Luer 2002
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century Of New Species of Stelis of Ecuador Part One Luer 2002 drawing fide; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010 drawing fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide
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