Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/700

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Herbs, either terrestrial and tuberous-rooted, with annual herbaceous stems; or epiphytes with creeping rhizomes emitting fibrous or fleshy roots and bearing simple or branched leafy stems often thickened into pseudobulbs. Flowers hermaphrodite, solitary or in spikes or racemes or panicles, often large and showy. Perianth superior, irregular, of 6 free or more or less combined segments, in 2 series; the 3 outer (sepals) all similar or the dorsal one larger and more concave than the 2 lateral which are always alike; the 3 inner (petals) always dissimilar (except in Thelymitra), the 2 lateral alike, but the third (called the lip, or labellum) usually exceedingly different, often spurred, lobed, fringed, or furnished with glands or other appendages. Stamens and style confluent into a fleshy variously shaped central body facing the lip, called the column; anther usually solitary (2 in Cypripedium), placed on the front, top, or back of the column, and either free or adnate to it, persistent or deciduous, usually 2-celled; pollen granular or waxy, usually cohering in each cell into 1, 2, or 4 pairs of pollen-masses (pollinia), which are either free or attached, directly or by a caudicle, to a gland on the apex of the stigma (rostellum). Ovary inferior, 1-celled; ovules numerous, on 3 parietal placentas; stigma a viscid depression towards the top or on the front of the column, below the anther, facing the lip, upper margin often produced into a beak or point called the rostellum. Fruit a 1-celled 3-valved capsule; seeds numerous, very minute; testa loose, reticulate; albumen wanting; embryo solid, fleshy.