红松盆距兰 hong song pen ju lan

Saccolabium raraense (Fukuyama) S. Y. Hu.

Stems creeping, usually 2-15 cm, slender. Leaves many, distichous; blade yellowish green, often with red speckles on both surfaces, oblong to lanceolate, 1.5-2.6 × 0.4-0.7 cm, apex acute and often with 3 short awns. Inflorescence subumbellate, 3-7-flowered; peduncle short, 8-10 mm; floral bracts ca. 1 mm; pedicel and ovary 5-6 mm. Flowers small, not widely opening, yellowish to yellowish green, with purplish blue spots near base of sepals and petals. Sepals similar, subelliptic, 3.5-4.5 × 1.7-2.5 mm, apex obtuse. Petals subobovate, shorter than sepals, apex rounded; lip with an epichile and a saccate hypochile; epichile nearly suborbicular or reniform, 2-3 × 3-4 mm, adaxially densely white barbate, with a yellow glabrous central cushion, apex rounded or slightly emarginate; hypochile subconic, ± laterally compressed, 3.5-4.5 mm tall, ca. 2 mm in diam., with narrowed tip and bent forward. Column very short; anther cap narrowed at apex. Fl. Jan-Feb.

● On tree trunks in coniferous forests; 1500-2200 m. Taiwan.

The record of the Japanese species Gastrochilus toramanus (Makino) Schlechter in the first edition of Fl. Taiwan (5: 1001. 1978) was based on the synonymization of G. raraensis within that species.