Spider orchid [for William Brass, an eighteenth-century British botanical illustrator and collector]

Mark W. Chase

Herbs, epiphytic, ± cespitose. Stems either reduced and covered with sheathing bracts or elongate with prominent, single-noded pseudobulb. Leaves 1(–2) per sympodium, from apex of pseudobulb, often with 1–3 short foliaceous bracts subtending single-noded pseudobulb; blade conduplicate, oblong-lanceolate, dorsiventrally flattened, margins entire. Inflorescences lateral, racemes; bracts narrowly triangular. Flowers: sepals and petals distinct and free, long, attenuate-caudate; lip unlobed; callus prominent, 2-lamellate; column without appendages, footless; stigmatic cavity ± round; rostellum not prominent. Fruits capsules.

Species 35 (1 in the flora): subtropics and tropics, Western Hemisphere.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Kooser, R. G. and G. C. Kennedy. 1979. The genus Brassia R. Brown section Eubrassia Lindley. Orchid Digest 43: 164–172. Williams, N. H. 1972. A reconsideration of Ada and the glumaceous brassias. Brittonia 24: 93–110.

Lower Taxon

• Brassia caudata (Linnaeus) Lindley