Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/714

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Terrestrial glabrous herbs. Root of globose or ovoid tubers. Leaf solitary; sheath usually long; lamina terete, long or short, sometimes reduced to a short erect point. Flowers small, sessile in a lax or dense spike, reversed so that the lip is uppermost, usually abruptly bent at the top of the ovary and consequently spreading or reflexed. Upper sepal (inferior by the reversion of the flower) lanceolate or oblong, concave, usually arched over the column; lateral (superior) as long or rather longer, lanceolate or linear, free or more or less connate. Petals equalling the sepals or shorter, lanceolate or linear. Lip superior, sessile or shortly clawed, or sessile on the produced foot of the column, usually erect at the base and concave, spreading or recurved above, ovate or lanceolate, undivided; margins entire or undulate; disc with an adnate plate or longitudinally thickened along the median line. Column very short, not winged, but furnished with 2 erect lateral lobes; rostellum usually long, erect. Anther erect, placed behind the rostellum which often exceeds it, 2-celled; pollinia attached by a linear caudicle to the rostellum.