Maxillaria arachnites Rchb. f. 1880 Photo courtesy of Weyman Bussey

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Common Name The Spider-Shaped Maxillaria

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador at elevations of 1000 to 3000 meters as a small sized, cold to warm growing epiphyte or lithophyte with a short, ascending rhizome carrying small, ancipitous, compressed pseudobulbs enveloped basally by several, imbricating leaf sheaths and carrying a single, apical, oblanceolate, erect or sub-erect, subacute leaf that blooms on an erect, to 8" [to 20 cm] long, single flowered inflorescencea arising on a newly arising growth, enveloped by several, tubular, acute sheaths and a lanceolate, acute, green spotted with purple floral bract.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 1 Dunsterville & Garay 1959; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 4 1970; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1338 Atwood 1989; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 6 COS 1998;

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