Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, often robust herbs with fleshy, branched, often aromatic rhizomes, the primary rhizome giving rise to an extensive branch system of secondary and tertiary rhizome.

Stems: Rhizomatous, fleshy.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, basal; appearing with or after the flowers. Surfaces glabrous. Margins entire. Lateral veins parallel, diverging from prominent midrib. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in thyrses, terminal from leaf tufts or on separate leafless shoots, arising from the rhizomes, cylindrical, dense, peduncles well–developed, primary bracts laterally adnate, forming pouches, the apices distinct, usually spreading, each subtending a cincinnus of 2–7 flowers, uppermost bracts sterile, larger and differently colored, bracteoles not tubular. Flowers slightly fragrant, bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic, pedicellate, floral tube funnelform, the lobes ovate to oblong. Calyx 3-lobed, the lobes unequal; tubular. Corolla adnate with the stamens into a floral tube, distally 3-lobed; corolla lobes unequal. Stamens 5, in 2 whorls, only the posterior one of the inner whorl fertile, the other 2 members of inner whorl connate to form a highly variable, often conspicuous labellum; labellum obovate, with a central thickening and 2 side lobes that overlap the lateral staminodes, lateral staminodes petaloid, oblong, folded under the dorsal corolla lobe; staminal filament short, broad; anther versatile, usually spurred at base, the connective sometimes elongated. Ovary inferior, with 2 variously developed apical nectary glands, 3-celled, sometimes incompletely so, rarely 1-celled, placentation axile, parietal (or essentially basal), or rarely free-central; ovules usually numerous; style filiform, often enveloped in a groove of the fertile stamen and embraced by the thecae; stigma various, often papillose and protruding beyond anther.

Fruit: Capsules globose or ellipsoid; irregularly dehiscent. Seeds arillate.

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