Volume 12 > Part 2 > Year 2014 > Page 309 > Orchidaceae

37. Acanthephippium Blume

Bijdr.: 353. 1825 [as Acanthophippium]; Hook.f., Fl. Brit. India 5: 815. 1890; Seidenf. & Smitinand, Orchids Thail.: 327. 1961; Seidenf., Opera Bot. 89: 50. 1986; Opera Bot. 114: 83. 1992; Seidenf. & J.J.Wood, Orchids Penins. Malays. Singap.: 156. 1992; S.Thomas, Orchid Monogr. 8: 119. 1997; N.Pearce & P.J.Cribb, Fl. Bhutan 3(3): 274. 2002; Pridgeon et al. (eds), Gen. Orchid. 4: 117. 2005; S.C.Chen et al. in Z. Wu et al. (eds), Fl. China 25: 309. 2009; Barretto et al., Wild Orchids Hong Kong: 457. 2011.

Accepted Name : This is currently accepted.

Description : Terrestrial herbs with pseudobulbous stems, evergreen, glabrous, mostly 30–60 cm tall. Pseudobulbs conical to cylindric, covered by the bases of the foliage leaves, close together. Foliage leaves 3–4, on the apex of the pseudobulb, plicate, lanceolate-ovate, cuneate at the base, petiolate, present during flowering. Inflorescences racemose, suberect and much shorter than the foliage leaves, arising from the basal portion of the new developing shoot; peduncles partly hidden by sheathing sterile bracts; rachis few-flowered; floral bracts persistent. Flowers large, resupinate; in Thai species usually white, cream-coloured, pink or yellowish with darker markings. Sepals united in their lower part into an urceolate body, adnate to the column foot and thereby forming a distinct spur-like or globose mentum. Petals free, smaller than the sepals. Labellum 3-lobed, spurless, mobile on the apex of the column foot, clawed at the base, with erect side lobes and a triangular or oblong mid-lobe; ornamented by one to few longitudinal keels. Column with a long, U-shaped column foot, glabrous; anther incumbent, versatile, with 8 clavate waxy pollinia. Capsule erect, held on an elongate pedicel.

A genus of 11 species distributed in a broad band ranging from Sri Lanka, S India and the Himalayas through the whole of SE Asia eastwards to New Guinea, New Caledonia and the islands of the SW Pacific Ocean, and also ranging northwards to S & C China and S Japan; 3 species in Thailand.