Orchid Information - Genus Agrostophyllum section Appendiculopsis

Agrostophyllum Blume sect. Appendiculopsis Schltr. ( ' Apendiculopsis' ), in Fedde, Rep., Beih. 1 (1912) 257

Synonyms:

Sympodial herbs. Roots rather thin, glabrous. Rhizome creeping. Stems elongated, slender, erect to pendulous, either branching or not, many-leaved. Leaves articulate, papyraceous to thinly coriaceous, small, the lower ones progressively smaller towards the base of the stem), lying in one plane with the stem axis (or not so), mostly at right angles to the stem (slightly spreading), often marked by the impressions of adjacent leaves (or not so); leaf sheaths enveloping the stem, tubular, glabrous, either or not with two acicular to filiform appendages, entire or more frequently deeply longitudinally slit opposite the blade and then with blackish margins along the slit (entire, with an obtuse triangular tooth opposite the blade); leaf blade oblong to linear-oblong (linear-lanceolate), twisted at the base (not twisted at the base), base truncate, strongly contracted between the sheath and the blade (base only slightly narrowed, not contracted at the base), margins entire, apex conspicuously 2-lobed with rounded lobules (or less distinctly so), mucronate. Inflorescences 1-flowered (up to 3- flowered), usually (not in A. laterale) fascicled at the top of the stem in a capitulum, the base of the fascicle with several persistent, distichous, short-lived bracts which eventually dissolve into fibres; occasionally individual inflorescences arise laterally from the sterns (in A. laterale normally only lateral ones are present); peduncle very short, enveloped by 2 or 3 membranous, subacute, tubular bracts; floral bract membranous, narrowly ovate. Pedicel and ovary with scattered brownish scale-hairs, 6-ribbed, terete. Flowers small, not resupinate, rather fleshy, especially the lip; sepals outside with scattered brownish scale­ hairs, epichilium of lip more or less distinctly papillose, otherwise flower glabrous. Median sepal broadly ovate to ovate-oblong, narrower than the lateral sepals, concave. Lateral sep­ als broadly obliquely triangular-ovate, forming an obtuse mentum, connate in the basal part on the adaxial side of the mentum, keeled outside along the midrib. Petals linear to lanceolate. Lip immobile; hypochile concave, containing nectar, with the lateral margins free from the column foot, or saccate, with the lateral margins adnate to the column-foot, which then appears to be absent, sulcate below, more or less conspicuously 2-lobed in front, the rim connecting the lobes of the hypochile often with a more or less conspicuous callus; epichile broadly ovate to transversely elliptic, convex, minutely papillose, median with a longitudinal concavity. Column short, semiterete, either or not with two obtuse stelidia at the top, without callosities or folds below the stigma; column foot short; clinandrium entire, dorsally with a broadly triangular filament; anther subcordate, c. 0.1 by 0.1 cm; pollinia 8, c. 0.1 cm long, clavate, pointed at the base, somewhat flattened, attached without caudicles to a common, rather small, elliptic, brown viscidium; stigma concave; rostellum either short, 2-dentate or triangular, or oblong and entire and then overtopping the clinandrium. Fruit ellipsoid, small, containing elaters.
(after Schuiteman 1997)

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