Masdevallia solomonii Luer & R. Vásquez 1989 SUBGENUS Masdevallia SECTION Masdevallia SUBSECTION Masdevallia
Photo by Eric Hunt
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name Solomon's Masdevallia [Director Of Missouri Botanical Garden and Codiscoverer of Species - Current]
Flower Size 1/2" [1.25 cm]
Found in Bolivia on ledges and rocky road cuts at an elevation of 2650 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte or terrestrial with slender erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 loose, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, erect, elliptical, acute leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the petiole that blooms in the early summer a slender, erect, 2 to 2 2/5" [5 to 6 cm] long, solitary flowered inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul with a bract near the base and a tubular floral bract holding the single flower just above the leaves.
The flower is distinguished by being yellow-orange, brown striped and suborbicular and have a large, deep mentum in which fits the long, incurved extension of the column foot and it has an oblong, arcuate, smaller lip.
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXII Systematics of Masdevallia Part 3 Luer 2001 drawing fide; Masdevallia's in Kleur Vol 1 P M Oversteegen, Eisses & A P Sijm 2001 photo fide; sOrchid Digest Vol 72 No 4 2008 photo fide; Orchids Masdevallia with its segregates including Dracula Zelenko 2014 photo fide;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
