Maxillaria aciantha Rchb.f. 1852 Photo courtesy of Eric Hunt

Another View Photo courtesy of Joseph Dougherty

to MOSTLY and

Common Name

Flower Size

Found from Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama at elevations around 200 to 1300 meters as a small to medium sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte that occurs in wet montane forests with clustered, cylindric-fusiform, laterally compressed, vertically ribbed pseudobulbs enveloped basally by 1 to 3, quickly deciduous, leaf bearing sheaths and carrying 2, apical, erect, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, attenuate, unequally bilobed apically leaves that blooms in the fall and winter on a lateral, [.6" [1.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence with the pedicel and ovary enveloped by a 3 to 5 inflated floral bracts.

Synonyms Lycaste aciantha Rchb.f. 1855; Rhetinantha aciantha (Rchb. f.) M.A. Blanco 2007

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 840 Dodson 1983; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1333 Atwood 1989; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum plate 092 Bennett & Chriatenson 1993; Fieldiana Biology, Flora Costa Ricensis Family # 39 Orchidaceae, subtribes Maxillariinae and Oncidiinae Atwood & Mora 1997;

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------