A somewhat shy looking Masdevallia only found in Ecuador where it grows at altitudes of 1200 to 1500 meters. It is named after El Pangui, the capital city of the Zamora-Chinchipe Province in Southeastern Ecuador where it was first found by Luer and Andreetta in 1983. This is another lovely species from the impressive section Durae in Masdevallia, a section known for its large leathery flowers with showy sepals and thick callous petals. This might not be the most spectacular species in the section as the sepaline tails are fairly short, but it is plenty nice still.
Not the easiest thing to photograph but the colors and patterns come through pretty well here. Most of these species look dark, almost solid in low light because of the thick and fleshy nature of the flowers, but properly lit the patterns really show. The purple and burnt orange tones contrast nicely to the yellow dorsal sepaline tail. I got this one from Ecuagenera and I grow this one mounted on EpiWeb in the cool vivarium, pretty low light.
Amazing! What size are we talking here?
Thanks Marius. It is quite large actually, I have not measured it but it should come in somewhere in the 5-6 cm range counting the tails. Add another 3-4 cm if you were to “flatten” it and measure tail to tail. Only wish I would have gotten the column in the photo as well, it is blood red! Oh, and by the way, I have not been able to capture this one on “film” until I got the new camera… I love it!! Thanks for all the help technology shopping. 🙂
Nifty little Masdevallia – like the pink lip.
Thanks Ron! 🙂 I do like this section of Masdevallia a lot. Although this one looks pretty inconspicuous until you get a little bit of light behind it, and then wow!!