Pinguicula laxifolia

Few Pinguicula grow the way this one does: instead of the neat flat rosette most butterworts produce, its summer leaves hang down in loose, semi-erect clusters from shaded limestone overhangs, sometimes trailing off the rock entirely. It circulated informally for years as P. coelestis, "the heavenly one", after its home at Rancho del Cielo, before being formally described in 1995 as laxifolia — "loose-leaved".

It comes from a single small area in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Tamaulipas, on the top of the El Cielo cloud forest mountains. Plants grow on shaded, vertical cliffs of limestone tufa at 1900 to 2070 m, in an oak and pine belt just above the cloud forest proper. It rains almost every night on the mountain, and some plants live under overhangs on nothing but the saturated night air.

Summer rosettes carry slender leaves up to 7 cm long, yellow-green to reddish-brown, often dangling from the rock. In winter the plant contracts into a tight succulent bud. Flowers are pink to pale violet with a yellow-green throat, carried singly on slender stalks. P. esseriana shares the same cliffs, and the two hybridise naturally where they meet.