APPENDICULA | Herbarium Digital Library


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APPENDICULA

Category: Plants and Orchids
Date Posted: 2006-10-11

APPENDICULA AS A GENUS IS ONLY INTERESTING FROM THE botanical point of view. The entire group comprises about 110 species that are distributed from Burma throughout the islands of the Pacific and twenty-seven of these are found in the Philippines. The generic name, Appendicula, is derived from the Latin noun appendicula, which means "small appendage," in reference to the characteristic horseshoe-like appendage, formed on the upper side of the lip towards its base.

Plants of this genus are generally upright with closely set, short, narrow, distichously arranged leaves and lateral or terminal racemes of small greenish to whitish flowers. The sepals are free and the lateral ones form a chin or mentum. The lip is entire, three-lobed with two callous thickenings and a concave appendage. The group is of no horticultural value, but should be mentioned because it is a prominent part of the Philippine Orchid vegetation.

The flowers of A,buxifolia, a representative species of the Philippine members of the genus, are minute and produced on short racemes from branching narrow sterns that are densely covered with distichously arranged leaves. The stems often grow to almost four feet and are shrublike.