舌喙兰属 she hui lan shu

Authors: Xinqi Chen, Stephan W. Gale & Phillip J. Cribb

Hemipilia flabellata Credit: Harvard University Herbaria

Herbs, terrestrial, small to medium-sized. Tuber subspherical to ellipsoid, fleshy. Stem erect, abbreviate, with 1 short sheathing cataphyll at base and 1 solitary leaf (rarely 2 leaves). Leaf basal, usually appressed to substrate, green, often with purple markings, cordate to ovate-cordate, directly sheathing stem at base, fleshy, glabrous. Inflorescence elongate, with 2-4 scattered sterile bracts and a few to several flowers in a lax to subdense terminal raceme, glabrous; floral bracts lanceolate, usually shorter than ovary. Flowers resupinate, purple, purplish red, pink, or nearly white, medium-sized; pedicel and ovary often slightly arcuate, narrowly cylindric-fusiform, glabrous. Sepals free; dorsal sepal often erect; lateral sepals spreading, oblique. Petals usually connivent with dorsal sepal and forming a hood over column, slightly smaller than sepals; lip spreading, spurred at base, 3-lobed or entire, adaxially finely papillate, with 2 prominent ridges below mouth of spur; spur cylindric to conic, rather long, often papillate inside. Column stout; anther hoodlike, with 2 divergent locules and a broad connective; rostellum conspicuous, to 2 mm, protruding between anther cells, lateral lobes fleshy, apically infolded; pollinia 2, granular-farinaceous, sectile, attached to viscidia via long caudicles; viscidia cymbiform, enclosed by folded apices of rostellum lateral lobes; stigma lobes confluent, slightly concave, posterior to rostellum; auricles 2, one on either side of anther base. Capsule narrowly ellipsoid.

About ten species: from Nepal, through Bhutan and S China, to Myanmar and Thailand; seven species (five endemic) in China; one additional species (endemic) is incompletely known.

Incompletely known species