Cuban Orchids

[JoseAndres]

I love the little ones! Here you can see my Maxillaria valenzuelana, now called Heterotaxis valenzuelana (A.Rich.) Ojeda & Carnevali.

IOSPE PHOTOS said:

Found from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela as well as Cuba in wet montane forests as a small sized, hot growing epiphyte or lithophyte often found in full sun at elevations of 100 to 1500 meters without pseudobulbs that has pendant, imbricating, ditichous, foliaceous sheaths with narrowly triangular leaves that forms a fan-shape and blooms on a short [3 cm], axillary, single flowered inflorescence arising from the upper leaf sheaths and occuring at any time during the spring and summer.
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The genus Maxillaria is one of the ancient, described in 1794, and as happened with other old and large genres, many species, originally described as Maxillaria were reclassificated to other genres like Lycaste, Bifrenaria, Pabstia, Xylobium, among others.
There has been reclassification of this genus based on DNA studies, these phylogenetic studies started in 2001 at the initiative of the University of Florida (USA) on a large number of species belonging Gender-Maxillaria (about 350), all of them came under discussion for years because in many cases there were significant morphological differences between them.
Molecular phylogenetics of Maxillaria and related genera (Orchidaceae: Cymbidieae) based on combined molecular data sets -- Whitten et al. 94 (11): 1860 -- American Journal of Botany