D.Don
Description
Habenaria pectinata is a terrestrial orchid of the Himalaya and adjacent China, distributed from India and Nepal through Bhutan into south-western China, with records also from Japan. GBIF holds around 222 occurrences, concentrated in the central and eastern Himalaya and the Sino-Himalayan borderlands. It is a plant of temperate forest and forest margins, grassy slopes, clearings and humus-rich banks, typically between about 1500 and 3000 m, flowering during the summer monsoon. The population photographed in West-Nepal at Sepka (2680 m, July) is characteristic of its occurrence in cool, moist mid-elevation woodland and adjoining meadows, flowering as the rains advance.
The plant is a tuberous terrestrial herb arising from ovoid to oblong root-tubers, producing a single erect, leafy stem. The leaves are several, cauline, ovate-lanceolate to oblong, sheathing at the base and grading into bracts above. The inflorescence is a lax to fairly dense terminal raceme of green to greenish-white flowers. Each flower shows the characteristic Habenaria structure: a galeate dorsal sepal with spreading lateral sepals, narrow petals, and a deeply tripartite lip whose lateral lobes are conspicuously divided into slender comb-like (pectinate) segments, giving the epithet, with a long slender spur behind. The column bears widely separated viscidia and elongate caudicles adapted to moth pollination; the fruit is a ribbed dehiscent capsule releasing dust-like seeds.
The family name as supplied (Orchideaceae) is an orthographic variant of the correct Orchidaceae. Habenaria is a large pantropical genus, and H. pectinata, described by David Don, belongs to a Himalayan group with fringed or pectinate lip lobes whose delimitation from allied species requires care. As a fairly widespread terrestrial orchid it is not globally assessed as threatened, but like many ground orchids it is sensitive to forest disturbance, habitat loss and collection.
Author: D.Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Orchids of Nepal, monograph of the genus Habenaria (Kraenzlin)