藓兰属 xian lan shu

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

Alvisia Lindley.

Epiphytes, medium-sized. Rhizome creeping, short, often stout, with slender branching roots. Pseudobulbs ovoid to fusiform, fleshy, few noded, with 1-3 leaves toward apex, covered by leaf sheaths below. Leaves conduplicate, longer than pseudobulbs, leathery, narrowing toward base then dilating into broad leaf sheaths at base. Inflorescences from apical nodes or terminal, racemose, shorter than leaves, few to many flowered; peduncle lacking sterile bracts; floral bracts small, shorter than or ca. as long as pedicel. Flowers resupinate or not resupinate, not opening widely, small, hairy or glabrous; pedicel and ovary glabrous or pubescent. Dorsal sepal free; lateral sepals obliquely triangular, forming a distinct conic mentum with column foot. Petals free, smaller than sepals; lip recurved, entire or 3-lobed; lateral lobes erect; mid-lobe entire, callus of 2 or 3 ridges. Column slightly arcuate, short; pollinia 8, in 2 groups, clavate, each group attached by caudicles to its own viscidium.

Perhaps 20 species: from Sri Lanka and SE Asia to New Guinea, NE Australia, and the SW Pacific islands; one species in China.