User:Nicholaswei/Oreorchis draft

Oreorchis is a genus of 17 species of plants in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. It is native to Asia from the Himalayas across India and China to Taiwan, eastern Siberia, Korea, and Japan. Its species closely resemble those of the primarily New World genus Corallorhiza but have leaves, which are lacking in all Corallorhiza species. Like several other closely allied Calypsoeae genera, its labellum is tri-lobed.

Description
Orchids in the genus Oreorchis are terrestrial herbs. They spread via underground pseudobulbs of several internodes connected by short rhizomes. The leaves are erect, 1 or 2 in number, pleated, and linear to lanceolate. Inflorescences emerge laterally from the pseudobulbs and are unbranched racemes, usually several- to many-flowered. The blooms are spirally arranged, small- to medium-sized. Their sepals and petals are free, subsimilar, spreading or porrect; the mentum is absent or, if present, short, formed by lateral sepal bases. The lip or labellum is three-lobed or entire with a narrow base, usually with a callus and lacking a nectar spur. The column has a short foot with a terminal anther and an opening on the underside; it carries four pollinia, which are roughly spherical in shape. The stipe or caudicle is hooked; the stigma is entire, concave, and oval in shape.

Taxonomy and naming
John Lindley first described members of this genus as deviant Corallorhiza species. The first taxa to be published were Oreorchis patens and Oreorchis foliosa from specimens in the western Himalayas and Siberia, respectively. Lindley noted that the floral structure was similar to that of the Corallorhiza, but that the plants possessed leaves, which were lacking in all Corallorhiza species. In 1859, he proposed the new genus Oreorchis for the new Asian species, along with two other species in his possession, citing the presence of leaves and globular, uncompressed pollinia attached to a "true caudicle with its gland." The genus name was derived from the Greek oreo-, meaning "of the mountains" and orchis, meaning "orchid" or "testicle," referring to the shape of the tubers of some orchid genera.

In 1919, Rudolf Schlechter published the first comprehensive review of the genus Oreorchis as it was known at the time, discussing eight species, three of which were new. Schlechter suggested that Oreorchis was an Asian genus with the most center of diversity located in eastern Asia and placed the genus within the subtribe Corallorhizinae.

Subsequent revisions of the genus regarding both its species and its relationships to other genera were made throughout the twentieth century. Aplectrum, Corallorhiza, and Oreorchis were generally recognized as closely related taxa, but the major genera of the Calypsoeae were only finally grouped together in 1960 by Dressler and Dodson. In 1994, John V. Freudenstein analyzed the column structure of several Corallorhizinae genera. Freudenstein noted that Aplectrum, Corallorhiza, Cremastra, and Oreorchis all had a hamular (hook-shaped) stipe and that the thickening of the endothecium, the layer of cells lying beneath the epidermis of anther wall, followed a similar pattern in those four genera, implying that they formed a clade within the Calypsoeae.

During the course of the twentieth century, two genera were split off from Oreorchis; both were later re-merged with the original genus. The first, Diplolabellum, was described by Maekawa in 1935. Maekawa transferred the species Oreorchis coreana, now regarded as a synonym of Oreorchis patens, to Diplolabellum, citing a labellum with a V-shaped fleshy callus produced in front, rather than two lamellae, compressed rounded pollinia and lacking a caudicle and retinaculum (viscidium) rather than globose pollinia with a distinct caudicle. The second, Kitigorchis, was described in 1971 by Maekawa, who transferred four species from Oreorchis to the new genus

Pearce and C. We have examined the type material of O. coreana from Paris. This contains a dissected perianth; the shape of the callus differs from other Oreorchis species, but it has been impossible to confirm the other differentiating features, particularly of the pollinarium which is missing. The dissected perianth is the only floral material seen of this predominantly cleistogamous species. Although the usual form of the callus on the lip in Oreorchis is bilamellate there is considerable variation within the genus: O. foliosa var. indica lacks a callus, in O. bilamellata it is V-shaped and in O. discigera cockleshell-shaped. As the distinguishing features of Maekawa's Diplolabellum cannot be confirmed from the herbarium material available, and since the other morphological features of O. coreana are consistent with Oreorchis, we treat it here as congeneric with Oreorchis. Further material should be examined before a definite conclusion can be reached about the status of this genus

List of species
The following is a list of Oreorchis species as of November 2020:


 * Oreorchis angustata L.O.Williams ex N.Pearce & P.J.Cribb - Sichuan, Yunnan
 * Oreorchis aurantiaca P.J.Cribb & N.Pearce - Myanmar
 * Oreorchis bilamellata Fukuy. - Taiwan
 * Oreorchis discigera W.W.Sm. - Myanmar
 * Oreorchis erythrochrysea Hand.-Mazz. - Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan
 * Oreorchis fargesii Finet - Fujian, Gansu, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang
 * Oreorchis foliosa (Lindl.) Lindl. - India, Assam, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Tibet, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan
 * Oreorchis itoana (F.Maek.) Perner - Honshu
 * Oreorchis micrantha Lindl. - Tibet, Taiwan, Assam, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar
 * Oreorchis nana Schltr. - Sichuan, Yunnan, Hubei
 * Oreorchis nepalensis N.Pearce & P.J.Cribb - Nepal, Tibet
 * Oreorchis oligantha Schltr. - Gansu, Sichuan, Tibet, Yunnan
 * Oreorchis parvula Schltr. - Sichuan, Yunnan
 * Oreorchis patens (Lindl.) Lindl. - Japan, Korea, Russian Far East (Kamchatka, Primorye, Sakhalin, Kuril Islands), China (Gansu, Guizhou, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan)
 * Oreorchis porphyranthes Tuyama - Nepal
 * Oreorchis sanguinea (N.Pearce & P.J.Cribb) N.Pearce & P.J.Cribb - Bhutan
 * Oreorchis yachangensis Z.B.Zhang & B.G.Huang - China (Guangxi)