Description: Epiphytic herbs, monopodial; vegetative stems vestigial; roots creeping over the surface of the substrate [or aerial], fibrous.
Leaves scale-like, imbricate, brown.
Inflorescence racemose, several-flowered, lateral; flowers resupinate. Sepals free, similar. Lateral petals free, slightly shorter than sepals. Labellum free, attached at base of column; lamina unlobed [or 3-lobed], with a prominent, backward-pointing spur and an incurved, filiform, apical appendage, otherwise unornamented. Column lacking free filament and style; column wings fused to column, expansive in upper half as ear-like lobes [or apparently absent]. Column foot absent. Anther incumbent, cap-like. Pollinia 4, waxy. Stigma entire. Rostellum obscure, ventral.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 170 species, southern & eastern Asia, Malesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Australia and New Zealand. Australia: 7 described species (?4 species endemic), Qld, N.S.W. 2 species in NSW, and 1 on Norfolk Island.
Text by P. H. Weston and M.A.M. Renner
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Labellum with bulbous basal spur. | Taeniophyllum muelleri |
| Labellum with basal pouch, but not a bulbous basal spur | 2 |
| 2 | Rachis smooth. | Taeniophyllum norfolkianum |
| Rachis papillose.
Back to 1 | Taeniophyllum sp. Whian Whian (A.R.Maslin 141) |
|
