Cheirostylis parvifolia - Small-Flowered Velvet Orchid

Small-Flowered Velvet Orchid is a terrestrial herb, 7-18 cm tall, rhizomatous. Stem is 2-7 cm long, 4-8 mm thick, pale brownish-green, unbranched, hairless. Leaves are 2-8, 1-4 cm long, upper ones smaller, withered during flowering, hairless; leaf-stalks 0.3-1 mm long, sheathing at base; blade 0.8-3.5 x 0.3-2.5 cm, ovate to ovate-lanceshaped, base blunt to flat, tip pointed or tapering, brownish-green to reddish- brown with pale yellow tinge, netveined, 3 to 5-veined. Flowers are borne in a raceme at branch-ends, densely 2- to many-flowered, sometimes one-sided, glandular, velvet-hairy. Flower-cluster-stalk are 0.5-10 cm long, pale green, with 2-3 sheathing bracts; sheathing bracts 0.8-2.5 cm long, light pink. Flowers are 0.7-1.3 cm long, resupinate. Sepals fused to form a sepaline tube, tip free, pale green to greenish-white with a pinkish tinge at tip. Petals are 2.2-3 x 0.5-1 mm (widest portion), obliquely oblong- spoon-shaped to narrowly obovate-sickle shaped, tip blunt, white, membranous, hairless, 1-veined. Lip is 3-4 mm long, white. Small-Flowered Velvet Orchid is found in South India and Sri Lanka. Flowering: August-January.