e-Key v3 - Corycium
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Orchidaceae - Orchidoideae - Orchideae - Corycium Sw.

Description :

  • Terrestrial herbs, with root tubers
  • Leaves cauline and basally clustered, narrowly lanceolate, imbricate, flat or sometimes strongly undulate
  • Inflorescence a dense raceme, many- or few-flowered; flowers normally globose or semiglobose with narrow entrance, resupinate or very rarely nonresupinate, yellow, pink, purple or green; bracts fresh at anthesis but sometimes with dry apices
  • Sepals mostly fresh at flowering time, sometimes dry and black; median one adnate to petals; laterals ± fused in basal portion
  • Petals frequently with posterior sac
  • Lip basally fused with gynostemium, with flat and wide claw, dilated above into bilobed, transversely lunate, or rarely oblong limb, with stalked shield-like appendage with variously shaped lateral or dorsal processes, rarely appendage elongate or hood-like
  • Gynostemium : structure very complicated; anther thecae horizontally reflexed or semipendent, situated at far corners of long horseshoe-shaped connective; pollinia 2, sectile, viscidia separate; stigmas convex cushions in median portion of gynostemium, facing upwards, sideways, or downwards
  • Capsule elliptic or oblong, usually much narrowed above, ribbed

Nomenclature:

  • Corycium Sw.
    • Swartz: 220 (1800)
    • Rolfe: 281 (1913)
    • Phillips: 239 (1951)
    • Schelpe: 106 (1966)
    • Stewart et al.: 190 (1982)
    • Kurzweil et al.: 217 (1991)
    • Linder & Kurzweil: 339 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global : Species 14, Southern Africa, extending into Malawi and S Tanzania
  • Southern Africa : Widespread

References:

  • KURZWEIL, H., LINDER, H.P., & CHESSELET, P. 1991. The phylogeny and evolution of the Pterygodium - Corycium complex ( Coryciinae , Orchidaceae ). Plant Systematics and Evolution 175
  • LINDER, H.P. & KURZWEIL, H. 1999. Orchids of southern Africa . A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam
  • PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25
  • ROLFE, R.A. 1913. Order CXXXI. Orchideae . Flora capensis 5,3
  • SCHELPE, E.A. 1966. An introduction to the South African Orchids . Purnell & Sons, Cape Town, Johannesburg
  • STEWART, J., LINDER, H.P., SCHELPE, E.A. & HALL, A.V. 1982. Wild orchids of southern Africa . Macmillan, Johannesburg
  • SWARTZ, O. 1800. Orchidernes slagter och acter upstallde. Kongliga vetenskaps academiens nya handlingar 21

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