Pretty picture: Maxillariella Maui Coconut

At some point, a new genus, Maxiarella, was split off from the genus Maxillaria. And I would just like to take a moment to boo and jeer and make rude gestures at the taxonomists who thought it would be a good idea to split one genus into two that are practically anagrams of one another.¹ I'm sure you had your reasons, guys, but nobody's ever going to be able to keep those straight. If you're not going to try to make the words recognizably different, maybe just leave them in the same genus, okay? It's not like anyone will know.

And then you get the intergeneric hybrid of the two, which is Maxillariella, also very easily confused for both of the parent genera. I mean Jesus Christ, taxonomists. Is the thrill completely gone from changing the names around every five minutes, that now you have to invent new ways to upset and confuse everybody?

[noise of irritation and disgust]

Anyway. Name aside, I don't have any particularly strong feelings about this one. We've seen previous Maxi[mumble]a species in 2015 (M. cucullata), 2012, and 2014 (both M. tenuifolia) The foliage on Maui Coconut is more interesting than usual, I suppose, but the flowers are small and unshowy.

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to have a fragrance, and my notes say that I might have gotten a whiff of something coconuty at the show but I wasn't sure about that.

I'm also not actually that big a fan of the smell of coconut, so even if I were certain about the fragrance, it wouldn't improve my opinion of the hybrid much.

Maxillariella Maui Coconut = Maxillariella sanguinea x Maxillariella tenuifolia (Ref.)

-

¹ Not quite actual anagrams, but about as close as a pair of non-anagrams could get; they differ by one letter. Both start with "Maxi," both end in "a," both contain a double-L and an "ar," but they remain one letter apart. (maxiarElla; maxillarIa)

Pretty picture: Maxillaria cucullata

First time for Maxillaria cucullata, though we've seen M. tenuifolia a couple times before (2012, 2014).

Only a close-up; I did take wider shots, but they didn't turn out well because the camera was confused about where to focus.

I think these flowers are prettier than those of M. tenuifolia. Granted, that's not a particularly high compliment.

Pretty picture: Maxillaria tenuifolia

Every year, I think okay, this is the year when I will pay attention to the smells and try to record which flowers have them and which ones don't, and every year, I manage to remember one or two of them, because by the time I'm at the show and remember that I was going to try to keep track of that, I realize that I don't actually have a way of recording that so that I'll remember it, and then there's still the drive back home, and sometimes a trip to Home Depot, and then the uploading of the photos, by which point I've forgotten most of what I'd managed to try to keep in mind about the whole olfactory experience.

Maxillaria tenuifolia got remembered this year because we've seen it before (previously: 2012), and readers left smell-related comments then, so when I saw it again, it was like oh, right, this is supposed to smell like coconut or something. Which I guess it kind of did, but it wasn't as close to coconut as I had imagined it might be. It's possible that some of that is explainable by interference from other scented things -- the venue itself is a garden center, and smells like one, and then there are multiple fragrant orchids around, plus lots of people who may or may not have their own odors, and the aroma situation inevitably winds up in an awfully complicated place.

In any case, definitely scented. And weird-looking besides, both the plant and the flower. (It may help to view the full-sized image.) Seems nice enough. I'm not hinting for someone to send me one, and getting one's not high on my list of priorities, but if I someday wind up in a situation where I come across an available M. tenuifolia, you know, maybe I'll take it.

Pretty (?) picture: Maxillaria tenuifolia

Not sure how I feel about this flower. Are they easy to grow? I could probably manage to like it, if it's easy to grow.


The tag said "Max. tenulifolia," with an extra "L," so we get to add one more to the big Orchid Show Error Scoreboard:

wrong tags: 6
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 9