Neotropical genus Maxillaria Ruiz & Pav. belongs to one of the most diverse and species-rich groups of orchids. Several of its representatives are popular, horticultural plants with large and showy flowers, often nicely fragranced. It is not uncommon that some distinctly colored individuals are introduced to the commercial market under names of similar, more or less related species, as informal varieties or color forms, largely causing confusion. While investigating the diversity of Maxillaria in Ecuador, we have encountered plants that were commercially referred to as M. sanderiana xanthina. In the course of conducted morphological and micromorphological analyses, we concluded that it is a new, separate species and hereby, we describe it as M. anacatalinaportillae.

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A comprehensive study of a typical steppe perennial

The aim of this paper is to present materials towards the taxonomic revision of Brachycorythis-complex (Orchidinae, Orchidaceae), which constitutes seven terrestrial genera and forty-eight species distributed in sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar and SW Asia. The detailed morphological descriptions, together with distribution data and ecological preferences for particular taxa are provided. Artificial keys for taxa identification were prepared. A molecular timescale for Brachycorythis species on a background of the subtribe Orchidinae was reconstructed using nuclear and plastid molecular markers. The results show that representatives of Brachycorythis separated from its last common ancestor presumably ca 20 Mya and the youngest taxa within the group seem to be its Asiatic representatives.

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