Herbs, perennial, terrestrial, rather succulent. Roots few, scattered along slender rootstock producing shoots at wide intervals, slender, fibrous. Stems slender, solitary leaves inserted toward middle. Leaves ascending; blade fleshy-leathery. Inflorescences terminal, solitary flower or 2-flowered racemes; floral bracts foliaceous, prominent. Flowers resupinate, showy; lip bearing prominent adaxial fleshy crests divided into distinct cylindric processes, margins laciniate; pollinia 2, viscidia absent; stigma flat. Fruits capsules.

Sep and lateral pet separate, spreading, similar in color, the pet somewhat wider and shorter; lip declined, not lobed, narrow below the middle, distally expanded, fringed on the margin and bearded on the face; column projecting forward over the lip, its terminal anther deflexed; pollinia 2; perennial from a short rhizome with a cluster of fibrous roots, the erect stem bearing a single lf near the middle, often a long- petioled basal lf, and a terminal bracteal lf subtending the solitary, short-peduncled fl; fls rarely 2. 2-several, irregularly cosmop.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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