e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707916025767_3216932709138458" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Cor<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707916025768_9716676337440517" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>ycium
SANBI Flora Keys Logo
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

Copyright of the content hosted by this website remains with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), unless stated otherwise.
Material from this site may be used in other media, provided that SANBI is acknowledged by the name South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) or refer to the 'How to cite this resource' paragraph on the Home page.
Liability disclaimer: Visitors use this site at their own risk and SANBI is not liable for any of the consequences resulting therefrom.