盔花兰属 kui hua lan shu

Authors:Authors: Xinqi Chen, Phillip J. Cribb & Stephan W. Gale

Aceratorchis Schlechter; Aorchis Vermeulen; Galeorchis Rydberg.

Herbs, terrestrial, small to medium-sized. Rhizome creeping, usually short; roots fibrous to fleshy. Stem erect, terete, with tubular sheaths near base. Leaves basal or cauline, 1 or 2, alternate, rarely subopposite, base contracted into clasping sheath. Inflorescence erect, terminal, racemose, laxly 1- to several flowered, glabrous; floral bracts conspicuous, lanceolate to ovate, leaflike. Flowers resupinate, secund or not, showy, small to medium-sized; ovary twisted, pedicellate, glabrous. Sepals free, glabrous; dorsal sepal erect, often concave; lateral sepals and petals usually connivent with dorsal sepal and forming a hood; lip simple or obscurely 3-lobed, spurred at base or rarely spurless. Column stout; anther erect, base firmly adnate to apex of column, with 2 parallel or divergent locules; pollinia 2, granular-farinaceous, sectile, each attached to a viscidium by a slender caudicle; each viscidium enclosed in a sticky globe, both globes enclosed in a common bursicle formed by folding of rostellar arms; stigma lobes confluent, concave, beneath rostellum; rostellum slightly protruding, with 2 arms; auricles 2, winglike, on each side of column. Capsule erect.

About ten species: mainly in the N temperate zone, extending to alpine areas of subtropical Asia and North America; five species (two endemic) in China.