Utricularia microcalyx is a small to medium-sized annual

Annual plant

An annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers, and dies in a year or season. True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed...

 carnivorous plant

Carnivorous plant

Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods. Carnivorous plants appear adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic...

 that belongs to the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Utricularia. It is native to tropical Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, where it can be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 and Zambia

Zambia

Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....

. U. microcalyx grows as a terrestrial plant in damp, sandy or peat

Peat

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter or histosol. Peat forms in wetland bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests. Peat is harvested as an important source of fuel in certain parts of the world...

y soils in grasslands at altitudes from 1200 m (3,937 ft) to 1650 m (5,413 ft). It typically flowers between February and July. It was originally described and published by Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor (botanist)

Peter Geoffrey Taylor was a British botanist who worked at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew throughout his career in botany. Taylor was born in 1926 and joined the staff of the herbarium at Kew in 1948. He published his first new species, Utricularia pentadactyla, in 1954...

 in 1964 as a variety of U. welwitschii

Utricularia welwitschii

Utricularia welwitschii is a small to medium-sized, probably perennial, carnivorous plant that belongs to the genus Utricularia. It is endemic to tropical Africa, where it can be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe...

. Taylor elevated this variety to the species level in 1971.