Hook.f.
Description
Liparis cathcartii is an East Himalayan terrestrial orchid known from a restricted range spanning northern India (Sikkim, West Bengal, Darjeeling), Nepal, Bhutan and south-eastern China; its modest tally of about 60 georeferenced occurrences (IN, CN, NP, BT) marks it as a regional endemic of the moist temperate forest belt. It grows in shaded, humus-rich leaf litter and on mossy banks within broad-leaved and mixed forest, generally between about 2000 and 3000 m. The plant photographed at Bersay on the Sikkim-West Bengal border at 2700 m in April, flowering early in the season, is typical of its cool, humid forest-floor habitat.
It is a small terrestrial herb arising from clustered, fleshy pseudobulbs partly sheathed by membranous scales. From each pseudobulb arise a few thin-textured, plicate, ovate to elliptic leaves with sheathing bases. The slender erect scape bears a lax raceme of several small flowers, greenish to purplish-brown in colour, with narrow spreading sepals and filiform petals; the lip (labellum) is the most distinctive organ, broad, recurved and often emarginate, contrasting with the slender column characteristic of the genus. The fruit is a small ellipsoid, ribbed capsule releasing abundant dust-like seeds dispersed by wind.
Liparis is a large, near-cosmopolitan genus of subtribe Malaxidinae, with Himalayan species notably diverse; L. cathcartii is allied to other temperate plicate-leaved members of the genus. Like most orchids it depends on mycorrhizal fungi for germination and is protected internationally under CITES Appendix II. Its narrow distribution and reliance on undisturbed forest make it sensitive to habitat loss, though it persists locally where forest cover remains intact.
Author: Hook.f. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, The Orchids of Sikkim Himalaya (King & Pantling), Genera Orchidacearum (Pridgeon et al.)