Representative Image
Representative image.

Kingdom: Plantae Rank: Genus Parent: Orchidaceae Status: Valid

Morphological Description

Diagnosis: All species produce miniature fan-shaped plants with racemes of white and green flowers usually about twice the length of the leaves. The sepals are usually conspicuously pubescent and the column (rostellum) is extremely elongate resembling the bill of a crane. Vegetatively they are similar to Psygmorchis, a genus which produces solitary yellow flowers. Plants of Ornithocephalus are also somewhat similar to Trizeuxis but always bear unbranched racemes rather than the complex panicles of Trizeuxis.

Vegetative Morphology

Habit: Caespitose epiphytes, but usually found as single fan-shaped growths without basal offsets. Pseudobulbs absent.

Leaves: Leaves bilaterally compressed, linear-lanceolate in profile, often lightly falcate in profile, leathery.

Reproductive Morphology

Inflorescence: Inflorescences axillary racemes, sometimes pubescent, the floral bracts inconspicuous.

Flowers: Flowers white, +/- green. Sepals and petals free, spreading, subsimilar and subequal or the petals broader and somewhat fan-shaped. Lip 3-lobed (at the base), sessile, with a callus at the junction of the sidelobes and midlobe. Column prominent, footless, with a conspicuously slender elongate beak-like rostellum, the anther with an elongate base corresponding to the rostellum; pollinia 4, on a common elongate linear stipe and minute viscidium.