美柱兰属 mei zhu lan shu

Authors:Authors: Xinqi Chen & Jeffrey J. Wood

Tylostylis Blume.

Herbs, epiphytic. Rhizome stout, creeping, covered by sheaths. Stems well spaced on a stout rhizome, or tufted, short to elongate, pseudobulbous, thick, somewhat clavate and consisting of only a few internodes, or terete and with many internodes, base loosely covered by dried sheaths, leafy mostly in upper part. Leaves 2-5, distichous, arising from nodes at apex of pseudobulb, suberect, conduplicate, leathery. Inflorescences axillary, short, with many flowers opening in succession, erect or spreading, axis covered by short, dense, stellate hairs. Flowers resupinate or not resupinate, usually cream-colored to orange-yellow, often with a dark brown lip, medium-sized, pubescent. Sepals with dense brown stellate hairs abaxially; dorsal sepal free, elliptic or elliptic-ovate; lateral sepals obliquely triangular, ventrally broadened at base, adnate to much elongated column foot forming a long, distinct mentum. Petals free, oblong, smaller than sepals, narrow; lip entire, articulate to column foot, closely pressed to column and column foot, often expanding at base or folded in such a way as to form a pouch. Column curving, short, foot at right angles to column, often somewhat sigmoid, shorter or longer than column, with an apical fleshy swelling; pollinia 8, obliquely shortly clavate, ± equal in shape and size.

Five or six species: China, Himalayan region, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam; two species in China.