Mountain Pauper Orchid

Description

Aphyllorchis is a genus of about twenty species of terrestrial leafless orchids in the family Orchidaceae. Orchids in this genus have fleshy, upright stems and small to medium-sized resupinate flowers with narrow sepals and petals. They are native to a region extending from India east to China and Japan, south to Indonesia, New Guinea and Queensland. Orchids in the genus Aphyllorchis are leafless, terrestrial, mycotrophic herbs. A few to many flowers are borne on an erect, usually fleshy, unbranched flowering stem. The flowers are resupinate, more or less cup-shaped with the sepals and petals free from each other and similar in length but with the dorsal sepal curving forwards. The labellum is larger than the sepals and petals, boat-shaped and divided into two main sections, an upper "epichile" and lower "hypochile". The epichile is attached to the base of the column and the hypochile often with two lobes and turned downwards. The genus Aphyllorchis was first formally described in 1825 by Carl Ludwig Blume and the description was published in his book Tabellen en Platen voor de Javaansche Orchideeen. The name Aphyllorchis is derived from the Ancient Greek words aphyllos meaning "without leaves" and orchis meaning "testicle" or "orchid".