Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Herbs, terrestrial or rarely lithophytic.

Stems: Rhizome usually elongate, creeping, fleshy, several noded, roots emerging from rhizome nodes, cylindric, stout. Stem erect or ascending, terete (cylindrical), leafy, glabrous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Leaves cauline or subrosulate, withered or pendulous at anthesis in some species. Blades linear-lanceolate, obliquely ovate-lanceolate, or elliptic. Blades adaxially green to blackish, sometimes with a white stripe along midvein. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Blades with or without a petiole-like base sheathing stem, sometimes slightly fleshy. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Inflorescence glabrous or pubescent, with a few crowded to scattered sheathing bracts and a few to many flowers in a short to elongate terminal raceme; floral bracts usually equal in length to pedicel and ovary. Flowers resupinate or occasionally erect, small, not opening widely; ovary twisted, glabrous or pubescent. Flowers perfect, zygomorphic. Sepals free, similar, outer surface glabrous to pubescent; dorsal sepal concave, forming a hood with petals; lateral sepals enclosing base of lip. Petals connivent with dorsal sepal, nearly as long as dorsal sepal though usually narrower; lip usually adnate to column margin at base, 2- or 3-partite or rarely entire; hypochile concave-saccate to cymbiform, containing 1 to a few scalelike, subulate or lamellate calli on each side at base; mesochile (when present) short, margin often involute and forming a tube, externally glabrous or pubescent and sometimes with a lamellate flange on each side; epichile dilated, entire to 2-lobed. Column short, dilated, with or without a pair of lateral wings. Anthers ovoid, 2-locular. Pollen forming 2 distinct pollinia, each longitudinally parted. Ovary inferior; stigma lobes separate, convex, lateral or at apical corners of column.

Fruit: Capsules erect; usually opening laterally by slits. Seeds very numerous; dustlike.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: