Maxillaria speciosa

Maxillaria speciosa is a species of flowering plant in the orchid family, Orchidaceae.

Maxillaria speciosa is endemic to the Chocó–Darién moist forests of Colombia and Ecuador, a region with wet, tropical, montane rainforests noted for its orchid biodiversity.^[1] One study site in Ecuador at an elevation of 640 m experiences at least 190 wet days per year, with a mean annual precipitation of 1393 mm.^[2]

Maxillaria speciosa is epiphytic or lithophytic, meaning that it grows from a pseudobulb anchored on rocks or other plants.^[3] The flowers are large, fragrant, and spider-like, with narrow, spreading sepals 12–15 cm long.^[3][4] The labellum is 3-lobed with an obtuse, elliptical midlobe.^[3] The flowers are yellow, white, and brown: sepals and petals are white near the base and yellow near the apices, with dark purple spots, and the lip is similarly-colored, with a white to yellow midlobe.^[3][4]

The type specimen of Maxillaria speciosa was collected by brothers Eduard and František Klaboch while traveling in Colombia and sent to Heinrich Reichenbach, who formally described the species in 1876.^[4] Writing about the new species, Reichenbach mused that the plant's abundance of fragrant flowers was "enough to forgive a Maxillaria its birth as a Maxillaria," noting that M. speciosa was more appealing than most members of its genus.^[4] In 1900, Robert Allen Rolfe formally described M. scurrilis, but he remarked that the taxon might represent the same species as M. speciosa.^[5] Indeed, Leslie Garay confirmed in 1967 that M. scurrilis is a synonym of M. speciosa.^[1][6]

Maxillaria speciosa is morphologically similar to M. patens and M. rodrigueziana, although phylogenetic studies have shown that neither species is sister to M. speciosa.^[3][7]