Dryadella edvalli
Dryadella is a Masdevallia relative. Similar flowers - as you can see - but smaller. Perhaps 2 cm at the most ( natural spread). But very freely produced, when the culture is right. This is a 3 inch pot here ( sorry about the dirty pot - too late to clean it now ! ). I think there are about 50 flowers here.
This species was discovered when a party of orchid enthusiasts was staying at the Rio Atlantic Forest Reserve in Brazil, and walking along the path on one of the mountain ridges ; a narrow path , by all accounts. And, like all orchid people in such places, one lady was not looking where she was going - because she was looking at the plants ( of course - what else ! ) . She fell off the path, rolled a little way down the slope, and reappeared a couple of minutes later, clutching the first example of this, known to science. In due course seed was raised and plants became available. Such happenstance !
My plant has just been to London for the European Orchid Conference - EOC -( one of the three major regional orchid shows - the others being the World Orchid Conference,WOC, and the Asia Pacific one - APOC) which are all held every three years, but alternately, so that there is only one of them each year. I was hoping that it would be on my Society's stand at EOC , and dreamt of gold medals etc.... the stand got an RHS Silver-Gilt, and "Best small stand in the show" but the stand builders thought that not enough flowers had opened on my plant to include it . The show started 8 days ago , so fair enough. Still it may be good for our own Society meeting next week.
The popular name for this with UK orchid dealers is "the partridge in the grass orchid" - and in the third pic' you can see why.
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