Orchidantha maxillaroides

The genus Orchidantha is based on O. borneensis described by N.E. Brown in 1886. In 1893, Ridley named another new species featured in the picture, Orchidantha maxillaroides , from a plant collected in Pahang and went on to errect a new family Lowiaceae to place these plants. The family is closely related to Musa (the banana family) in having 5 stamens facing a style and a large middle petal. Flowers last only 1-2 days and are found on branching inflorescence. The flower looked like an orchid, with 2 lateral petals and a large central petal known as labellum (equivalent to the lip of orchids, the landing pad for pollinating insects).

Flowers from O. borneensis and fimbriata are known to be putrid to attract flies or dung beetles but I could not detect any smell in this plant. Paradoxically, natives from Terengannu were obseved to use the leaves of O. fimbriata, which seemed to have a banana smell when crushed, to wrap rice cakes.

Since there's not much information about other species of this little known genus in the internet, I reproduce here an ID key based on R.E. Holttum's paper in 1970. It's very likely that more species have been described since then.