禾叶兰属 he ye lan shu

Authors:Authors: Xinqi Chen & Jeffrey J. Wood

Chitonochilus Schlechter; Diploconchium Schauer.

Herbs, epiphytic. Stems clustered, without pseudobulbs, erect or pendulous, slender, bilaterally flattened, with many internodes, leafy. Leaves distichous, usually twisted at base to lie in one plane, usually narrowly oblong to linear-lanceolate, narrow, rather thin, with black- or brown-edged imbricate sheaths, base sheathing and articulate. Inflorescence terminal, usually globose heads on an elongate axis, or in a panicle, surrounded by bracts, often densely many flowered, rarely reduced to a few flowers or a solitary flower. Flowers resupinate, white or yellow, occasionally reddish, small, often self-pollinating. Sepals and petals free. Lateral sepals forming a mentum containing saccate lip base. Petals narrower than sepals; lip entire or 3-lobed, saccate base divided from blade by a transverse partition, forming hypochile and epichile; hypochile saccate at base, often with callus inside. Column short or rather long, foot rudimentary; anther incumbent; pollinia 8, waxy, usually with short caudicle, commonly attached to a solitary viscidium; stigma suborbicular, concave, large; rostellum conspicuous, subtriangular.

Between 40 and 50 species: Old World tropics from the Seychelles and tropical Asia east to the Pacific islands, with the center of distribution in New Guinea; two species in China.