Maxillaria caespitifica Rchb. f. 1876 Photo by David P. Banks, Australia ©

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Common Name The Mat-Forming Maxillaria

Flower Size 1 1/2" [4 cm]

Found as a miniature sized, hot to warm growing, ascending, unifoliate epiphyte from Nicaragua south to Peru and Venezuela, Surinam, Guyana, French Guiana in hot wet, montane forests at elevations of 100 to 1200 meters with a rhizome with 2 to 3 distichous, imbricating sheaths, between each oblong-elliptic, compressed pseudobulbs partially enveloped basally by a few scarious, distichous, imbricatring leafless below and leaf-bearing above sheaths and carrying a single, lorate, acute, flat, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate clasping base leaf that blooms on a subsessile, single flowered inflorescence arising on a newly forming psuedobulb with close, short, tubular bracts arising from the basal sheaths and occuring in the spring and summer. Very similar to Maxillaria variabilis and is a less straggling orchid with smaller pseudobulbs and flowers that are less shiney.

Synonyms Maxillariella caespitifica (Rchb. f.) M.A. Blanco & Carnevali 2007

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 4 Dunsterville & Garay 1966; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 451 Dodson 1982; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 845 Dodson 1983; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 095 Bennett & Christenson 1993; Fieldiana Biology, Flora Costa Ricensis Family # 39 Orchidaceae, subtribes Maxillariinae and Oncidiinae Atwood & Mora 1997; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 3 Dodson 2002;

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