Dracula fafnir Luer 1993 SUBGENUS Dracula SECTION Dracula SUBSECTION Dracula SERIES Parviflorae
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website
LATE
EARLY
Common Name The Dragon Dracula [refers to Fafnir a dragon of Icelandic Lore]
Flower Size 1.2" tall x .6" wide [3 x 1.5 cm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1400 meters as a small sized, cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3, loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, tall carinate, narrowly elliptical, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the conduplicate, long-petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late fall and early winter on a horizontal to descending, arising from low on the ramicaul, provided with sparse bracts, loose, 4.8" to 5.6" [12 to 14 cm] long, successively few flowered inflorescence with a tubular, oblique, shorter than the pedicel floral bract .
"The whitish flower suffused with red-brown along the margins of the narrow sepals that does not open widely. The eongate lateral sepals are connate about half their length with an acute angle between them. The forwardly directed tails are a little longer than the baldes. The petals are not remarable except for being shorter than usual. The lip is thick and subpandurate with only a slight constriction between the 2 halves. The epichile is concave with a cenral carina flanked on either side by lesser, multibranching lamellae." 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 drawing fide; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010
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