Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small, terrestrial, creeping or decumbent perennial herbs with succulent rhizomes, freely rooting at the nodes.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Usually confined to the upper portion of plant, alternate, membranous. Blades green or variously colored. Margins entire. Veins parallel, often with contrasting venation. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in relatively open terminal spikes. Flowers bisexual (perfect), usually greenish yellow to white. Each flower subtended by a single membranous brac. Perianth: dorsal sepal and lateral petals adnate, forming a hood over the column, ventral sepals partially connate and somewhat expanded, enclosing base of labellum; labellum adnate to base of column, the base spurred or saccate, with 2 large, enclosed, sessile glands, middle part of labellum narrowed to a channeled claw with a toothed or fringed flange on either side, apex widened to a transverse, 2-lobed blade. Stamen 1, adnate to and surrounding the style forming a column. Column nearly terete (cylindrical), with 2 small wings in front; anther terminal, adnate to column, pollinia 2, narrowed into a single caudicle and attached by a gland to the rostellum; rostellum short, 2-lobed. Ovary inferior, 3-carpellate; stigmas 2 on either side of rostellum base.

Fruit: Capsules fusiform.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: