Odontochilus Blume
齒唇蘭屬
LEOU, Chong-Sheng
Terrestrial herbs. Stem fleshy, creeping below, erect and leafy above, or more often much branched and long creeping, with terminal shoots ascending or erect. Leaves alternate, ovate, petiolate, oblique at base, bearing 3 grooves above and many ridges beneath; petiole long, conduplicate, forming sheaths at base. Inflorescence terminal, spicate, peduncle often hairy. Flowers few to many, resupinate; sepals free or connate at base, dorsal one forming hood with petals, lateral ones spreading or half opened, saccate at base; petals falcate; lip adnate to base of column, tripartite, hypochile smaller, bisaccate at base, sacs surrounded by base of lateral sepals, mesochile clawed, claw grooved, bearing pectinate lateral flanges, epichile bilobed, lobes wing-like; column stout, erect, with 2 ventral appendages or not; anther 2-celled, sessile or rarely short stalked, spirally twisted at apex; pollinia 2, clavate, asymmetrical, sectile, coated with viscid substance at stalk (caudicle), joined together at tapered stalk and attached to viscidium, without tegula stipe; stigma 2, ventral, separated or connected with narrow strip, rarely fused as single structure; rostellum erect or rarely procumbent, spirally twisted at apex.
About 21 species China, Indonesia and Fiji. Four species in Taiwan.
The status of Odontochilus as a genus has long been debated. Species of Odontochilus are separable from species of Anoectochilus in Taiwan on characters of the gynostemium structure visible in fresh material.
