珊瑚兰属 shan hu lan shu

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

Herbs, leafless, heteromycotrophic. Rhizome coralloid, usually branching extensively, fleshy; roots absent. Stems erect, sometimes clustered. Inflorescence terminal, erect, racemose, with several membranous tubular sheaths, yellowish green or pale purple; rachis few to many flowered, lax or dense; floral bracts triangular-lanceolate, small, membranous. Flowers resupinate; pedicel and ovary fusiform. Sepals similar, free, sometimes connivent, lanceolate; lateral sepals slightly oblique, sometimes connate at base and forming a short mentum with base of column at apex of ovary. Petals broadly lanceolate or obovate, usually shorter than sepals; lip simple or 3-lobed, spurless, margin often involute; disk with 2 fleshy longitudinal lamellae extending from base up to midway along its length. Column elongate, sometimes with ventral wings; anther terminal, incumbent, subglobose, attached by a narrow filament; pollinia 4, separate, subglobose, waxy, without conspicuous caudicles, attached to a solitary sticky viscidium; viscidium triangular, broad; stigma surface elliptic-cordate; rostellum triangular, small. Capsule pendulous, ribbed.

Eleven species: temperate and montane areas of Central and North America, with one circumboreal species; one species in China.

Lower Taxon

• Corallorhiza trifida Châtelain