Masdevallia rafaeliana Luer 1979 SUBGENUS Amanda Luer 1986
Photo by © Walter Schug
Photo by © Daniel Jimenez
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name Rafael's Masdevallia [Sr Rodriguez Cabballero Orchid Illustrator current]
Flower Size .7" to .9" [1.7 to 2.3 cm]
Found in Costa Rica and Panama in wet montane and cloud forests at elevations of 1500 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with somewhat stout, ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3, loose tubular sheaths and carying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-oblong, subacute to obtuse, gradually narrowing below into the indistinct, sulcate, subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a slender, suberect, 5 to 8" [12.5 to 20 cm] long, simultaneously few [3 to 8] flowered, slightly flexuous inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul with 2 to 3 distant bracts and inflated, acute floral bracts,
Synonyms Spilotantha rafaeliana (Luer) Luer 2006
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; *Selbyana 5(2): 149. 1979; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1454 Mora & Atwood 1992 drawing fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1454a Mora & Atwood 1993 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXV Systematics of Masdevallia part 5 Luer 2003 drawing fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVIII Luer 2006 as Spilotantha rafaeliana; AOS Bulletin Vol 75 No 3 2006 drawing/photo fide; Orchids of Costa Rica Vol 1 Morales 2009 photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide
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