Prosthechea varicosa(Bateman ex Lindl.) W.E.Higgins

WFO wfo-1000054148 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Norma Piedra
fig. a Norma Piedra, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-05 / obs. 204516930
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Skjold Søndergaard
fig. b Skjold Søndergaard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189714320
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Sobeida Morales
fig. c Sobeida Morales, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186910099
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Adrianh M. Orozco
fig. d Adrianh M. Orozco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 16210539
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
fig. e Neptalí Ramírez Marcial, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63060189
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by harrier
fig. f harrier, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195809863
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by harrier
fig. g harrier, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195809608
Prosthechea varicosa, photographed by Skjold Søndergaard
fig. h Skjold Søndergaard, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189711334

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
01055342
Filed as
Prosthechea varicosa (Bateman ex Lindl.) W.E.Higgins
Det. by
R. Jiménez Machorro 2007-01-01
Collected
E. J. Alexander 1945-04-15
Origin
MX
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 10 botanical countries

Regions where Prosthechea varicosa is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestCosta RicaEl SalvadorGuatemalaHondurasPanamá
Native distribution of Prosthechea varicosa, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Costa Rica COS SOUTHERN AMERICA
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Honduras HON
Panamá PAN

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 105 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 3.3 °C 6.7 °C 10.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.3 °C 21.6 °C 26.3 °C
Annual rainfall 894 mm 1,621 mm 3,267 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 62 mm 256 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 105 research-grade observations of Prosthechea varicosa that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 14 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.

  • Encyclia chiriquensis (Rchb.f.) Schltr.
  • Encyclia phymatoglossa (Rchb.f.) Schltr.
  • Encyclia varicosa (Bateman ex Lindl.) Schltr.
  • Encyclia varicosa subsp. leiobolbon (Hook.) Dressler & G.E.Pollard
  • Encyclia varicosa var. leiobolbon (Hook.) M.Wolff & O.Gruss
  • Epidendrum chiriquense Rchb.f.
  • Epidendrum leiobolbon Hook.
  • Epidendrum lunaeanum A.Rich. ex Lindl.
  • Epidendrum phymatoglossum Rchb.f.
  • Epidendrum quadratum Klotzsch
  • Epidendrum ramirezzi Gojon Sánchez
  • Epidendrum varicosum Bateman ex Lindl.
  • Pollardia varicosa (Bateman ex Lindl.) Withner & P.A.Harding
  • Pseudencyclia varicosa (Bateman ex Lindl.) V.P.Castro & Chiron

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. 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.