Masdevallia xanthodactyla Rchb.f. 1877 SUBGENUS Amanda Luer 1986
Photos by © S Manning and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name or Meaning The Yellow Fingered Masdevallia [refers to the sepaline tail color]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Ecuador and northern Peru at elevations of 2200 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender, ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-oblong, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall, winter and spring on a slender, erect, 4 to 6.8" [10 to 17 cm] long, loose, secund to subsecund, simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with 1 to 2 distant bracts below the middle, from low on the ramicaul with thin tubular floral bracts and carrying the flowers beginning just at or just above leaf height.
Synonyms Spilotantha xanthodactyla (Rchb.f.) 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 Spilotantha xanthodactyla;
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