Masdevallia planadensis Luer & R.Escobar 1988 SUBGENUS Meleagris Luer 1986
Photo by © Jorge Mario Munera
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name or Meaning The La Planada Masdevallia [A research center near where the species was discovered]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Narino department of Colombia to central Ecuador at elevations around 1800 to 2100 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, gradually narrowing below into the indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, slender, 2.8" [7 cm] long, congested, successively few flowered inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul, with a bract below the middle.
Distinguished by the dull white, glabrous flowers faintly suffused with purple externally and the relatively short sepaline tails, the oblong, abruptly and obliquely acute petals and an oblong lip with a revolute, subtruncate apex.
Synonyms Rodrigoa planadensis (Luer & R.Escobar) Luer 2006
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXV Masdevallia Part 5 Luer 2003 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVIII Luer 2006 as Rodrigoa planadensis; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide;
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