Masdevallia carmenensis Luer & Malo 1978 SUBGENUS Pygmaeia SECTION Amaluzae Luer 1986

Photo by Alfonso Doucette Copyright © 2009, and His Flicker website

Another Angle Photo courtesy of © Lourens Grobler

Another Flower Angle Photo courtesy of Oliver Lenhard and his Orchideen Website

Common Name The El Carmen Masdevallis [Town in Ecuador]

Flower Size 1 1/5" [3 cm]

Found as a miniature sized, pendant growing epiphyte in cloud forest at elevations of 1000 to 2726 meters and as such is a cool to cold growing orchid from Ecuador and Colombia with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 short, tubular sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute leaf that is cuneate into the slender petiole that blooms in the fall and winter on a slender, single or successively few flowered, horizontal to pendant, 2 to 2 2/5" [5 to 6 cm] long inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul with a bract below the middle and a tubular floral bract holding the flower amid the leaves.

Synonyms Luzama carmenensis (Luer & Malo) Luer 2006

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Systematics of Masdevallia Vol 2 Luer 1986; Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXI Systematics of Masdevallia Part 2 Luer 2000 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 3 Dodson 2002 photo fide; Orchidaceae Masdevallia and Affiliates Dodson & Luer 2009 as Luzama carmenensis drawing fide;

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