Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Plants 4–24 cm tall, slender.

Stems: Rhizome short. Stem erect or ascending, pale brown, with several to many leaves.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves cauline, usually clustered and overlapping. Blades linear to linear-lanceolate, sometimes bractlike, 2-8 × 0.2-0.6 cm. Apex acuminate. Surfaces pale brown. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheathing stem, not stalked. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Inflorescence 2-7 cm, glabrous, with a few to more than 20 densely arranged flowers; floral bracts reddish brown, ovate-lanceolate, 8-12 mm, longer than flower, glabrous, apex long acuminate. Flowers resupinate, white or yellowish white, small; ovary and pedicel elliptic-cylindric, 5-6 mm, glabrous. Sepals glabrous; dorsal sepal narrowly ovate-oblong, concave, 4-6 × 2-3 mm, 1-veined, apex obtuse; lateral sepals obliquely oblong, 4-5.5 × 1.5-2.5 mm, 1-veined, apex acute or obtuse. Petals subovate to obovate, oblique, 4-5.5 × 1.5-1.8 mm, glabrous, 1-veined, apex obtuse; lip pale yellow to yellow, cymbiform, 4-5 mm, 3-partite; hypochile concave-saccate, containing 2 subtriangular, lamellate calli; mesochile ca. 1 mm, exterior surfaces minutely papillate toward apex, margin denticulate, involute; epichile transversely elliptic-oblong, 1.4-1.8 × 2-2.5 mm, minutely papillate, apex with a small mucro to slightly emarginate. Column ca. 1.5 mm; wings longitudinally oblong; rostellum arms ca. 0.6 mm. anther ovoid, 2-locular. Pollinia 2, each longitudinally parted. Ovary inferior; stigma lobes separate.

Fruit: Capsules erect; pale brown; elliptic; ca. 6 mm; splitting longitudinally. Seeds numerus; dust-like.

Ploidy: 2n = 20; 22; 40; 42; 50; 100

Habitat:

Elevation Range: