Maxillaria desvauxiana Rchb. f. 1854 Photo courtesy of Jean Claude George

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Common Name Desvaux' Maxillaria [French Botanist 1800's]

Flower Size 2 1/4" [5.5 cm]

This medium sized, hot to cool growing, caespitose, epiphytic or lithophytic species with prominent, unifoliate, ovoid, slightly compressed pseudobulbs subtended by scarious sheaths and has a single, elliptic-oblong, coriaceous, petiolate, dark green leaf that is found in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru in wet montane forests with a wet winter and early spring at elevations of 100 to 1850 meters that has a basal, 3/4" [2 cm] long, or subsessile, bracteate, solitary flowered inflorescence with 4 to 5 distichous, imbricating, inflated bracts arising on a mature pseudobulb with the fragrant flower held very near to the pseudobulb and pointed upwards. This species flowers in the late spring and summer.

Synonyms Maxillaria coriacea Barb. Rodr. 1882; Maxillaria huebneri Schltr. 1925; Maxillaria petiolaris A. Rich. ex Rchb. f. 1882; Maxillaria verrucifera C. Schweinf. 1945

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora Brasilica Vol XII VII 115-147 Hoehne 1953; Flora Brasilica Vol XII VII 115-147 Hoehne 1953 as M huebneri; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 5 Dunsterville & Garay 1966; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 4 1970; Fieldiana Biology, Vol 33, 1st Supple. to the Orchids of Peru Schweinfurth 1970 as M huebneri; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Series II plate 0532 Dodson 1989; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 098 Bennett & Christenson 1993; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 6 COS 1998; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 3 Dodson 2002; Orquideologia Vol. 23 No 2 2004 photo;

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