Description:

• Terrestrial herbs, very rarely epilithic or epiphytic
• Stems robust or slender, 0.1-1.0 m tall, with globose or elongate root tubers; occasionally with sterile shoots
• Leaves radical, basal or cauline, linear to lanceolate and ovate, conduplicate or flat; green at flowering time, rarely hysteranthous
• Inflorescence: raceme or corymb, lax or dense, few- or many-flowered, rarely one-flowered; flowers resupinate or not resupinate, very rarely doubly resupinate; various shades of white, red, pink, yellow, green, brown, purple or blue; bracts usually lanceolate and acute, sometimes dry and membranous
• Sepals free, often apiculate; median sepal galeate and normally spurred, spur elongate or sac-like, sometimes obsolete; lateral sepals flat or navicular, spreading, patent or recurved
• Petals usually smaller than sepals, ovate-oblong to falcate, basally fused with gynostemium, almost always with prominent anticous lobe, apically often bilobed
• Lip linear, narrowly lanceolate, lorate, spathulate or broadly ovate, patent or pendent, margins sometimes crenulate or fringed (some species of Disa sect. Herschelianthe)
• Gynostemium with erect, horizontally reflexed or pendent anther, thecae parallel and adjacent, anther canals not prominent; pollinia 2, sectile, attached by short or long caudicles to 2 viscidia or rarely to 1 viscidium (Disa sect. Monadenia); stigma pad-like, pedicellate or sessile; rostellum 3-lobed or unlobed, if 3-lobed with square or horn-like lateral lobes and insignificant or rarely tall and finger-like central lobe
• Ovary twisted or untwisted
• Capsule cylindrical or narrowly ellipsoid
• x = 19 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Disa P.J.Bergius
  • Bergius: 348 (1767)
  • Rolfe: 210 (1913)
  • Schelpe: 90 (1966)
  • Linder: 11 (1981a)
  • Linder: 262 (1981b)
  • Stewart et al.: 103 (1982)
  • Linder & Kurzweil: 187 (1999)
• Monadenia Lindl.
  • Lindley: 356 (1838)
  • Rolfe: 186 (1912)
  • Schelpe: 82 (1966)
  • Linder: 339 (1981c)
  • Stewart et al.: 148 (1982)
• Penthea Lindl.
  • Lindley: 360 (1838)
  • Rolfe: 208 (1913)
  • Schelpe: 88 (1966)
• Herschelia Lindl.
  • Lindley: 362 (1838)
  • Rolfe: 199 (1913)
  • Schelpe: 86 (1966)
  • Linder: 365 (1981d)
  • Stewart et al.: 143 (1982)
• Forficaria Lindl.
  • Lindley: 362 (1838)
  • Rolfe: 207 (1913)
• Orthopenthea Rolfe
  • Rolfe: 179 (1912)
  • Schelpe: 80 (1966)
• Amphigena Rolfe
  • Rolfe: 197 (1913)
  • Schelpe: 84 (1966)
• Herschelianthe Rauschert
  • Rauschert: 433 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 162, Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Madagascar and Mascarene Islands
• Southern Africa: Species 131, widespread