毛鞘兰属 mao qiao lan shu

Authors: Xinqi Chen, Yi-Bo Luo & Jeffrey J. Wood

Herbs, epiphytic, lithophytic, or rarely terrestrial. Stems long or short, leafy throughout except at base, usually throughout with reddish brown, rarely white, hispid hairs, sometimes hairs restricted to leaf sheaths and inflorescences. Inflorescences lateral, from any node, piercing leaf sheath, short and few flowered, or long, pendulous, and many flowered; floral bracts at right angles to rachis, large, concave, hairy. Flowers resupinate, not opening widely, small to medium-sized. Sepals red hairy abaxially, lateral sepals adnate to column foot forming a mentum. Lip entire to obscurely 3-lobed; disk with or without keels, sometimes papillose. Column with a foot; pollinia 8.

About 50 species: from mainland Asia through SE Asia to New Guinea and the Pacific islands; four species (one endemic) in China.