Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small to large, usually pubescent perennial herbs, hairs, when present, multicellular and not sunken at base, lacking aromatic oil cells, with usually thick, tuberous, sympodial rhizomes.

Stems: Aerial stems unbranched or branched, often rigid and spirally twisted.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, spirally arranged. Petiolate, with closed, sometimes ruptured, tubular sheaths, petioles with a ligule. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in a spicate inflorescence with an unbranched axis, or sometimes in thyrses, terminal on normal leafy stems, or separate, on shorter stems leafy only at apex or leafless, or rarely flowers solitary in the upper leaf axils, primary bracts usually densely imbricate, sometimes appendaged at apex, with a narrow nectariferous callose protuberance just below apex. Flowers bisexual (perfect), zygomorphic. Calyx of 3 connate seapls, the lobes often unequal. Corolla of 3 petals; petals somewhat fleshy, connate, the lobes unequal. Stamens 6 in 2 whorls of 3, but only the posterior one of the inner whorl fertile, the other 2 of the inner whorl adnate to the 3 members of the outer whorl to form a petaloid, often showy, 3–5-lobed labellum, fertile stamen large, petaloid, adnate to the floral tube at base and exserted from the funnel of the labellum; anther dithecal, the cells usually well–separated, often appendaged at apex. Ovary inferior 2–3-celled, placentation axile; ovules numerous; style filiform, commonly embraced by the thecae; stigma papillate, protruding beyond the anther.

Fruit: Fruit a partially loculicidal capsules; rarely indehiscent; crowned by the persistent calyx. Seeds arillate.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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