Maxillaria auyantepuiensis Foldats 1961 Photo courtesy of Andy's Orchids, Copyright © 2002 All rights reserved

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Common Name The Auyantepuy Maxillaria [A tepue {mesa-Like mountain} in Venezuela that gives birth to Angel Falls]

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in wet, tropical and cooler montane forests at elevations of 220 to 1400 meters as a small sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with ovoid, lightly complanate, lightly sulcate with age, dark green pseudobulbs surrounded basally by long hairs and carrying a single, apical, narrowly linear-lanceolate, attenuate to the elongate, slender petiole, acuminate leaf that blooms in the spring on short, basal, 5/8 to 7/8" [1.5 to 2 long, single flowered inflorescence arising on a mature pseudobulb then concealed by 4 to 5 subinflated, distichous, imbricating, acute bracts and holding a campanulate flower.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1965; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 4 1970; Colombian Native Orchids Vol 3 COS 1991; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 309 Bennett & Christenson 1995; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 3 Dodson 2002;