Maxillaria elegantula Rolfe 1898 Photo by Agroriente and their Peruvian Orchid Website

Another flower? Photo by The Ecuagenera Orchid Website

Flower Closeup? Photo by © Lourens Grobler

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Common Name The Graceful Maxillaria

Flower Size

Found in Peru and Ecuador at elevations of 400 to 2550 meters as a medium sized, warm to cold growing species with a creeping rhizome giving rise to narrowly ellipsoid, compressed pseudobulbs subtended by several, large, distichous sheaths and carrying a single, apical, petiolate, oblong-elliptic, chartaceous, acute, compressed petiolate base leaf that blooms on lateral to erect, to 10" [25 cm] long, basal, single fowered inflorescence carrying a large, showy flower that is held amid or above the leaves.

The flowers in this species can be highly variable in colors and forms of the sepals, petals and lip. That being said only the first photogrpah can be keyed out as M elegantula for sure by the references provided below.

Similar to Maxillaria augustae-victoriae, M christensonii M colombiana, M crispiloba, M × dichroma, M x doucetiana, M eburnea, M fletcheriana, M fucata, M grandiflora, M grandis, M irrorata, M lehmannii, M macropoda, M sanderiana and Maxillaria turkeliae

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI; AOS Bulletin Vol 28 No 7 1959 photo hmm; Orchids of Peru Vol 3 Schweinfurth 1960; The Manual Of Cultivated Orchid Species Bechtel, Cribb & Launert 1992; Die Orchideen Band 1B lieferung 28 1713 - 1776 Brieger 1993 photo fide; Las Orquideas del Peru Bezverhov 2011 photo fide; Maxillaria an Unfinished Monograph Vol 1 Christenson 2013 photos fide to the first photo

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