Plants 12-30 cm tall. Rhizomes erect, woody, simple or branched, covered with short scales. Aerial stems blackish, slender, terete, more or less rigid, 10-20 cm long, remotely scaled, scales ovate, 2-3 mm long, subacute. Racemes 3-5 cm long, 5-8-flowered; bracts deltoid, 2-3 mm long, acute; pedicel and ovary slender, yellowish brown, ascending, 1-2 cm long, calyculus less than 1 mm tall, irregularly denticulate. Flowers with spreading or subspreading perianth; sepals and petals more or less cucullate, pale brown or nearly whitish, sometimes tinged with purple; dorsal sepal oblanceolate-oblong, 12-16 mm long, 2-3 mm wide, apex acute; lateral sepals falcate-lanceolate, 12-14 mm long, 2.5 mm wide, slightly oblique; petals obliquely oblanceolate, 11-15 mm long, 3 mm wide, acute; lip whitish, with purple apex, obovate-spatulate, 10-15 mm long, 4-6 mm near apex, canaliculate at lower part and connate with lower half of column for half of its length, limb more or less expanded, unlobed, with incurved and irregularly denticulate margin, disc barbate in middle, hairs multicellular, purplish toward tips, inner wall around basal tube shortly papillose; column white, slender, 10-12 mm long, semiterete, dorsally 2-grooved, with dilated top, wing indistinctly crenate; stigmatic plate protruding, trapezoid, distinctly pappilose on ventral side. Capsules blackish, cylindrical, 2-3 cm long.

TAIPEI: Chiajioling, Ying s. n. Aug 1987; Ying s. n. Aug 1988. ILAN: Oobishan, Masamune s. n. Apr 1938.

China (Fukien) and Japan. Taiwan, broadleaved forests, 600-1,000 m, in northern mountainous regions.

According to S. S. Ying (1987), Lecanorchis taiwaniana is distinguished by the indistinctly 3-lobed lip and the entire, glabrous midlobe. Specimens of L. taiwaniana, however, have the lip unlobed, but with incurved or erect sides near the expanded limb, which is denticulate along the margin and with a barbate disc. These plants are therefore conspecific with L. nigricans. The plant reported by T. P. Lin (1987) as L. nigricans is actually a peloric form derived from an uncertain species of Lecanorchis. Its lip is petaloid, unlobed, and nearly free from the column, as usually found in peloric flowers.