Zeuxine

• Authority

  Ackerman, James D. 1995. An orchid flora of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 73: 1-203.

• Family

  Orchidaceae

• Scientific Name

  Zeuxine

• Description

  
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  Genus Description - Plants sympodial, leafy terrestrials. Roots fleshy; root hairs present. Stems creeping below, succulent, glabrous, ascending to erect above. Leaves nonarticulate, sessile or petiolate, sheath broad, often membranous, convolute, conduplicate. Inflorescences dense terminal spikes or racemes, flowers spirally arranged; floral bracts membranaceous, scarious, mostly longer than the flowers. Flowers small, few to many, scarcely opening. Sepals subequal; dorsal sepal erect, concave, connivent with the petals and forming a hood; lateral sepals free, enclosing the base of the lip. Lip sessile, adnate to the base of the column, base concave, subsaccate, or cymbiform and containing 2 glands, lamina not extending beyond the lateral sepals, more or less contracted in the middle, abruptly dilated at apex into a small entire or winglike terminal lobe. Column short; rostellum large, deeply divided; stigmas 2 on either side of the column, convex; anther dorsal, 2-chambered, membranous; pollinia 2, sometimes bilobed, pyriform, sectile, attached by a gland to the rostellum, with or without a caudicle. Fruit a capsule, erect, ovoid to subglobose.

• Discussion

  Zeuxine Lindley, Edward's Bot. Reg. 19: sub t. 1618. 1833. nom. conserv. Type species. Zeuxine strateumatica Schlechter based on Orchis strateumatica Linnaeus from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, Burma (Myanmar), China, Malayasia, Borneo, Philippines, Japan, and naturalized in Cuba, southern U.S.A. (Louisiana, Georgia, Florida), and Puerto Rico. A genus of about 30 species extending from Africa to Sri Lanka, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Australia to Samoa. One species has naturalized in parts of the neotropics. The generic name comes from the Greek word meaning "a yoking" and refers to the partial union of the lip and the column and possibly to the fusion of the pollinia (C. A. Luer, 1972).