Dracula orchids: trade records reveal conservation risks in the Andes

In the mist-laden Andean cloud forests, one orchid genus has become a particular obsession for wildlife traders.

It is not a primate or a reptile. Instead, the focus is something more understated - and a touch more eerie: Dracula orchids.

They look and sound as if they ought to be named for blood. Yet the genus name actually comes from the Latin for “little dragon”, a nod to the long, dark sepals that can resemble fangs.

When the first species was collected from Colombia’s Western Andes in 1871, 19th-century botanists called the flowers "grotesque and whimsical," and said they inspired an "irresistible attraction."

Not long afterwards, orchid collectors began sending them to European glasshouses.

That fascination has never really disappeared. Online, these orchids have gone viral not only because of their gothic reputation, but also because the sepals can give the impression of a ‘monkey face’.

Many hobbyists and commercial growers swap and sell cultivated specimens responsibly. Even so, there are still buyers looking for wild-collected plants, and Dracula orchids are not exempt. Where a species may survive as only a few dozen individuals, one collecting expedition can be catastrophic.

Dracula orchids in the Andes cloud forests

"What's striking about Dracula orchids is the contrast between their huge online popularity and the almost complete lack of knowledge we have about their conservation status," Diogo Veríssimo of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute wrote last year.

Veríssimo contributed to an assessment which found that almost 70 percent of the genus’s 133 species were threatened with extinction.

"We often assume that species we see widely shared on social media must be well studied, but for these orchids, that's far from true. Their viral fame hasn't translated into understanding or protection, and that's what makes the new assessment so urgent," said Veríssimo.

Nearly every known Dracula orchid is an epiphyte, growing on trees in the Andean cloud forests, chiefly across Colombia and Ecuador.

A striking 69 percent of the genus is known from fewer than six locations worldwide. Some species are confined to a single valley.

What 42 years of trade records reveal (1981 onwards)

A new study in Biological Conservation has traced what became of that "irresistible attraction" by analysing four decades of formal trade data.

According to the researchers, 121 of the 133 recognised species - 91 percent - have been traded legally across borders since 1981.

In total, more than 112,000 individual plants were recorded moving through 25 exporting countries and 52 importing countries.

Almost half of the recorded trade - 49 percent - originated from nations where these orchids do not naturally occur.

The largest single shipment across the entire 42-year dataset involved 4,650 plants of Dracula cordobae. Although this species occurs only in Ecuador, the consignment travelled from Taiwan to Belgium in 2004.

‘Artificially propagated’ - and why researchers are sceptical

Across those 112,000-plus plants, every single one was officially registered as artificially propagated. Over more than four decades, not one plant was declared as taken from the wild.

The research team is not convinced that this can be accepted without question.

"For newly described or recently discovered species, key life-history traits such as longevity are often unknown or lack empirical scientific evidence," wrote the authors, led by UK-based orchidologist Edicson Parra-Sánchez of the University of Cambridge.

"This uncertainty complicates the determination of propagation status and may increase the risk of wild-sourced individuals being misclassified as artificially propagated."

Adding to the concern, 89 percent of all Dracula species were first described scientifically using plants already held in nurseries, rather than plants documented in wild populations.

Many of these original specimens were not even in the orchids’ home countries - most were in the United States. Only 7 percent of species were formally described from confirmed wild plants.

Put another way, many of these orchids had entered commercial circulation before science had even assigned them names - which raises suspicion.

Looking across the genus, the median gap between a species being formally described and its first appearance in trade was 8 years. For species described after 1981, that median dropped to 5.

Eighteen percent of species appeared in trade within two years of being named.

One species, D. fuligifera, was reportedly exported a full year before it was formally described.

D. anthracina is known from a single patch of forest, with just 17 adult plants recorded. It has been traded internationally since the year it was discovered.

Around 10 percent of all logged Dracula trade - more than 11,000 plants - was recorded only as "Dracula sp.", without any species identification, making it unclear precisely what was bought and sold.

The authors also identified errors embedded in the official record: one species incorrectly labelled in a 2013 shipment; another sold for years under a name later amended by taxonomists; and two naturally occurring hybrids shipped and documented as though they were full species.

CITES status and calls for tighter protection

At present, Dracula is listed under CITES Appendix II, allowing trade under a permit system.

The study’s authors argue this level of control is insufficient, and they are urging that the entire genus be moved to Appendix I, which bans international commercial trade.

"Our results indicate that listing the genus in CITES Appendix I may be necessary to prevent further erosion of evolutionary history," the researchers write.

They say that stronger protection would also create more delay between a species being found and entering trade.

Some Dracula orchids have not even reached the marketplace.

Three remain so scarce that they are scarcely known beyond their scientific descriptions. D. irmelinae is known from wild populations but has never been recorded in cultivation.

D. inexperata has only been cultivated at the single location where it was first discovered.

D. fafnir has not been observed - either in the wild or elsewhere - since the day it was formally described.

The research has been published in Biological Conservation.

This piece was fact-checked by Rachel Garner and edited by Michael Irving. Although we take care with our checks, we are human. If you notice an error, please contact us.