管唇兰属 guan chun lan shu

Authors: Xinqi Chen & Jeffrey J. Wood

Herbs, epiphytic, small, monopodial. Stems short, enclosed in leaf sheaths. Leaves few, linear-falcate or strap-shaped, flat, jointed and sheathing at base. Inflorescence lateral, often pendulous, racemose, rather long, few to many flowered, a few flowers open at once or all open together; peduncle short; rachis terete, sometimes clavate, fleshy, sulcate; floral bracts small. Flowers rather short-lived or lasting for ca. 1 week, to 9 mm in diam., white, yellowish, or greenish with various purple, brownish purple, or red markings, slightly fleshy. Sepals and petals free, spreading; lateral sepals usually larger than dorsal sepal, base adnate to back wall of spur. Petals smaller than sepals; lip base firmly connate to base of column, immovable, very fleshy, spurred, 3-lobed; lateral lobes on either side of spur entrance, very small, toothlike; mid-lobe laterally compressed, very fleshy, with incurved margin; spur often ± laterally compressed, broadly conic, thickly walled, unornamented inside, sometimes with protuberances at its entrance. Column short, stout, footless; rostellum short; pollinia 2, waxy, subglobose to ovoid, entire, attached by a common linear stipe to a solitary ovate viscidium.

Eleven species: India, Thailand, and Peninsular Malaysia, north to Taiwan and the Philippines, south to Indonesia, east to New Guinea, Australia, and the Pacific islands; one species (endemic) in China.

The genus Tuberolabium has been monographed by J. J. Wood (Nordic J. Bot. 10: 481-486. 1990).