SPECIES DESCRIPTION

                         FAMILY AND GENUS DESCRIPTIONS

ORCHIDACEAE

General description:- Perennial herbs with rhizomes, vertical stock or tuberous roots, terrestrial, sometimes obtaining nutrition from decaying matter (saprophytic), usually with symbiotic fungi in or on the roots (mycorrhiza).

Stems:- Sometimes swollen at base to form pseudobulbs.

Leaves:- Entire, spirally arranged or in two opposite rows, one on each side of the stem (distichous), rarely subopposite, reduced to scales or sheaths in saprophytes.

Flowers:- Inflorescence a spike or raceme. Flowers zygomorphic, the sepals, petals and stamens apparently inserted higher than the ovary (epigynous), usually hermaphrodite. Perianth-segments 6, in 2 whorls; median inner segment (labellum) usually larger and of different shape from the others, usually directed downwards owing to the ovary or the stem (pedicel) twisting through 180°, often with basal spur. Anthers and stigma borne on a column formed from fused filaments and style; stamens 1, rarely 2, with stalkless (sessile) or short-stalked (subsessile), 2-celled (2-locular) anthers behind or at the summit of the column; pollen-grains single or in tetrads, bound by elastic threads in packets (pollinia) which may be narrowed into a sterile, stalk-like caudicle. Ovary inferior, 1-locular, with parietal placentation, rarely 3-locular; stigmas 3, all fertile, or with the median sterile and often consisting of a beak-like process (rostellum) between the anthers and fertile stigmas; rostellum often forming 1 or 2 viscid bodies (viscidia) to which the pollinia are attached; viscidia sometimes enclosed in 1(2), simple or 2-lobed, membranous, pocket-like outgrowths (bursicles) of the rostellum.

Fruit:- A capsule, splitting open to release the seeds (dehiscing) by 3 or 6 longitudinal slits; seeds numerous, minute, with undifferentiated embryo and no endosperm.

EPIPACTIS

General description:- Plants with horizontal or vertical rhizome and numerous fleshy roots.

Stem:- Leafy.

Flowers:- Pedicellate, patent or pendent, in more or less secund spikes. Perianth-segments free, patent or connivent, the inner similar to the  outer but smaller. Labellum with concave or cupuliform basal part (hypochile) separated by narrow joint or fold from the flat, forward-directed distal part (epichile), with basal tubercles or ridges; spur absent. Column short. Rostellum usually large and globose, sometimes absent. Viscidia absent; bursicles absent.

Key features:-
1) Outer perianth-segments at least 7 mm
2) Flowers patent or pendent, pedicellate, in a ± secund spike; column not longer than wide



REFERENCES
1) Flora Europaea Vol 5 (Cambrige University Press).
2) The Kew Plant Glossary.  By Henk Beentje.
3) The Names of Plants. By David Gledhill (Cambrige University Press).
4) The Orchids of Crete and Karpathos. By Alibertis Antonis
5) Orchids Crete and Dodecanese. By Horst & Gisela Kretzschmar, Wolfgang Eccarius.