Brachycorythis

Brachycorythis is a genus of ground orchids, terrestrial herbs in the Orchidaceae family. The generic name, Brachycorythis, is derived from the Greek words brachy meaning short and korys meaning helmet, referring to the convex upper sepal.

The plants grow from undivided or palmate root tubers. The simple, overlapping leaves emerge along the full lengths of the stems, decreasing in size and density on the way up.

The flowers grow in a stem-tip raceme in shades of pink, lilac, mauve, purple, yellow or brown, usually spotted or blotched darker. The leaf-like bracts, one subtending each flower, are ovate to lanceolate, often longer than the flowers.

The sepals are free, the median one usually cohering with the lateral petal pair at the top, forming the helmet of the resupinate flower in which the median petal is the lip below. The pair of lateral sepals ascend or spread and recurve.

The usually oblique lateral petals resemble the median sepal which touches base against the gynostemium. The horizontal or bent down lip below has a saccate or spur-like lower part and is entire or lobed into two or three parts. Many Brachycorythis species have no flower spur at all.

In the gynostemium column the erect anther, the adjacent thecae and the coverings for the pollen sacs are found, as well as the rostellum, separating the fleshy stigma that is hollow and undivided from the male parts.

The fruit is a capsule that is narrowly oblong in shape.

There are 33 Brachycorythis species, all in Africa, Madagascar and tropical Asia. Seven of these species occur in the summer rainfall area of southern Africa. A revision of the Brachycorythis genus can be found in http://www.jstor.org/pss/4108866.

The plant in picture is Brachycorythis pubescens (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Liltved and Johnson, 2012; Lowrey and Wright, 1987).