Myrmecophila thomsoniana (Banana Orchid)

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 4 separate observations

Myrmecophila thomsoniana, photographed by caymanmatt — fig. a caymanmatt, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-08-22 / obs. 152592263

Myrmecophila thomsoniana, photographed by marique — fig. b marique, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 26245119

Myrmecophila thomsoniana, photographed by Rose Zappa — fig. c Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 68274482

Myrmecophila thomsoniana, photographed by purperlibel — fig. d purperlibel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 18667119

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: The New York Botanical Garden
Accession: 168151
Filed as: Schomburgkia thomsoniana Rchb.f.
Det. by: J. D. Ackerman 1996-01-01
Collected: T. G. Yuncker 1958-05-25
Origin: JM
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Myrmecophila thomsoniana, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cayman Is.	CAY	SOUTHERN AMERICA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Also published as 11 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Laelia thomsoniana (Rchb.f.) L.O.Williams
Myrmecophila albopurpurea (W.H.W.Strachan ex Fawc.) Nir
Schomburgkia albopurpurea (W.H.W.Strachan ex Fawc.) Withner
Schomburgkia brysiana var. atropurpurea (Hook.f.) H.G.Jones
Schomburgkia brysiana var. minor H.G.Jones
Schomburgkia brysiana var. thomsoniana (Rchb.f.) H.G.Jones
Schomburgkia thomsoniana Rchb.f.
Schomburgkia thomsoniana var. albopurpurea W.H.W.Strachan ex Fawc.
Schomburgkia thomsoniana var. atropurpurea Hook.f.
Schomburgkia thomsoniana var. minor Hook.f.
Schomburgkia thomsoniana var. minor W.H.W.Strachan ex Fawc.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.