Dracula sodiroi (Schltr.) Luer 1978 SUBGENUS Sodiroa [Luer] Luer 1989
Photo by Jay Pfahl © plant grown by Arturo Carrillo.
Photo by © Dale and Deni Borders plant grown by Jimm Rassmann.
Photo by © Lourens Grobler
Photos by © Eric Hunt plant grown by SF Conservatory of Flowers.
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name Father Sodiro's Dracula [Ecuadorian Priest early 1900's]
Flower Size 1 5/8" [4 cm]
Found in Pichincha and Imbabura provinces of Ecuador at elevations of 1500 to 2400 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing terrestrial with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3, tubular sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, carinate, very narrowly obovate, acute, gradually narrowing below into an indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on an erect, slender, arising from low on the ramicaul, 8" [20 cm] long, few flowered inflorescence with a tubular, oblique, shorter to just as long as the pedicel floral bract.
Similar to D erythrocodon but differs in the terrestrial habit, the multi flowered inflorescence, the externally orange colored flowers and the abscence of a callus on the petals.
Synonyms *Masdevallia sodiroi Schltr. 1915
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; AOS Bulletin Vol 44 #5 1975 as Masdevallia sodiroi photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 48 No 7 1979 drawing/photo fide; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; The Manual of Cultivated Orchids Bechtel, Cribb & Laurent 1992; The Illustratred Encyclopedia of Orchids Pridgeon, 1992; Icones Pleurothallidinarum X Systematics of Dracula Luer 1993 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 Drawing/photo fide; Manual of Orchids Stewart 1995; Orchid Digest Vol 61 #4 1997 photo fide; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 42 - 43 pg 2626 - 2762 Brieger 2001; Botanica's Orchids Laurel Glen 2002 photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 72 No 4 2008 photo fide; Draculas Del Ecuador Pupulin, Merino and Medina 2009 photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide
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