Xiphosium Griffith.

Herbs, epiphytic or lithophytic. Rhizome creeping. Pseudobulbs tufted, ovoid or dilated, enclosed within several acute, imbricate, brown sheaths below, 1-leaved at apex or with 2 or 3 leaves toward apex, covered when young by acute sheaths. Leaves suberect to erect, conduplicate, leathery, articulate to apex of sheath. Inflorescence terminal, synanthous, racemose, secund; floral bracts prominent, lanceolate, almost as long as flowers. Flowers resupinate, campanulate or opening widely, spreading or subnutant, white, pink, red, or yellow, small, glabrous. Sepals fused into a cylindric tube except for their apical 1/4, or dorsal sepal free, lateral sepals oblique at base, attached to column foot to form a conic mentum. Petals free, enclosed in tube, oblanceolate, smaller than sepals; lip entire and ecallose, or 3-lobed and callose, recurved in apical half, lacking a spur, firmly attached to column foot to form an obscure mentum. Column with a foot ca. as long as or longer than column; anther 8-locular; pollinia 8, clavate, attached to a prominent, elongate, narrowly elliptic viscidium, bifid at apex; rostellum prominently bilobed; ovary markedly keeled, triangular in cross section.

About ten species: Bhutan, S China, N India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam; three species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Chen Xinqi (陈心启 Chen Sing-chi); Jeffrey J. Wood)