Maxillaria cucullata Lindl. 1840 Photo by © Lourens Grobler .

Yellow Color Variety Photo courtesy of © Danny Lentz, plant grown by the Atlanta Botanical Garden

Red flower varietyPhoto courtesy of Noble Bashor

Questionable Species ANYONE? Photo by David P. Banks, Australia copyrighted ©

to and EARLY

Common Name The Cowl Carrying Maxillaria

Flower Size 1 1/2" to more than 3 1/2" [4 to 9 cm]

Found from Mexico south to Ecuador at elevations ranging from 700 to 3300 meters in damp rain or mist forests as a small sized, cool to hot growing epiphyte, terrestrial or lithophyte with a small pseudobulbs enveloped almost completely by several scarious sheaths and carrying a single, apical, linear to oblong elliptic, coriaceous, obtuse or rounded apically, basally conduplicate leaf that has variable foliage and flowers borne through the axils of the several, distichous sheaths subtending the clustered, ovoid-oblong, compressed psuedobulbs that blooms on a 5 to 15" [7.5 to 37 cm] long, solitary flowered inflorescence arising on a mature pseudobulb and that has scarious-fibrous bracts that almost completely cover the peduncle and fragrant flowers and occuring in the fall and early winter.

Synonyms Maxillaria atrata Rchb. f. 1866; Maxillaria galeata Rchb.f 1842; Maxillaria praestans Rchb. f. 1885; Maxillaria rhombea Lindl. 1840; Maxillaria rubrilabia Schltr. 1923; Psittacoglossum atratum La Llave & Lex. 1825

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Las Orquedias de El Salvador Vol 3 Hamer 1981 as Maxillaria atrata; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 849 Dodson 1983; Flora Novo-Galaciana Vol 16 McVaugh 1985;

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