Odontochilus crispus - Crisped Toothed-Lip Orchid

Crisped Toothed-Lip Orchid is a miniature to small sized, terrestrial orchid with a decumbent, slender stem carrying 2-4, at the tip of the stem, ovate, pointed, minutely undialte margins, narrowing below into the dialated stalked base leaves. The plant blooms in the later summer and earlier fall on a velvet-hairy, provided with 1 to 2, lanceshaped, tapering, velvet-hairy bracts shorter than the stem, 5.5-9 cm long, 4-8 flowered inflorescence and purplish, lanceshaped bracts with outer surface velvet-hairy, nearly as long as the ovary floral bracts. Flowers are upside down, greenish white; ovary and flower-stalk twisted, cylindric, 8-10 mm, hairless. Sepals are green, velvet-hairy on outer surface, 1-veined; dorsal sepal forming a hood with petals, narrowly ovate, boat-shaped, about 6 x 2.3 mm, tip tapering; lateral sepals narrowly elliptic, oblique, about 6.5 x 2.7 mm, tip somewhat pointed. Petals are green, triangular, sickle shaped, about 6 x 2 mm, hairless, tip tapering. Lip white, Y-shaped, about 1.3 cm; hypochile slightly dilated, shallowly bisaccate, about 2 mm, containing a central longitudinal septum and 1 stalked, fleshy callus on either side; mesochile about 4 mm, margin incurved and entire to shallowly crenulate, lacking flanges; epichile longitudinally dilated, long, 2-lobed; lobes diverging at an pointed angle to one another, oblong to obovate, about 7 x 3 mm, margin crenulate or minutely toothed, tip flat-blunt. Crisped Toothed-Lip Orchid is found in Nepal, Bhutan, NE India, China, at altitudes of 1600-1800 m. Flowering: September-October.