Microtis oligantha

Features

Terrestrial, glabrous, fleshy, tuberous bright green to dark green perennial herb forming small colonies or occurring as solitary plants. Plants at flowering up to 150 mm tall. Tubers globose to ovoid. Stem erect, terete, fleshy. Leaf solitary, usually overtopping inflorescence (but often damaged and so falling short), bright green to dark green, rarely tinged with red near base, closely sheathing stem for much of length, linear-terete, hollow, up to 200 mm long. Inflorescence a loose raceme up to 30 x 5 mm. Flowers 1-10, up to 2.8 mm diameter, shortly-stalked mostly widely spaced. Perianth green, segments up to 1.8 mm long, widely spreading, thick and fleshy. Dorsal sepal 2.5 mm long, broadly ovate, erect or projecting forwards, cucullate, concave, column-embracing, apex and margins rounded (without recurved apex), smaller than ovary at flowering; lateral sepals much shorter, narrower, mostly acute to subacute, strongly deflexed, apices straight. Petals shorter again, broadly to narrowly obtuse, erect, mostly hidden under dorsal sepal. Labellum sessile, up to 2.0 mm long, green or yellow-green, oblong, slightly narrowed at mid-length; apex bluntly truncate rarely slightly emarginate, not apiculate; margin papillose, shallowly crenate, often thickened, rarely undulate; anterior callus variously developed, verrucose, rather irregular, often raised on a rounded ridge; basal calli conspicuous, dark green, tabular-ovoid to tabular, usually continuous at sides with narrow band of callus behind a transverse, silt-like (not pouched) furrow; labellum sharply deflexed, pendulous aligned more or less parallel to the ovary. Column short, obtuse, base of column mostly broader than stigma, wings mostly membranous throughout. Anther terminal, erect, situated above stigma, hemispherical, pollinia spheroidal, pollen granular. Stigma broadly ovate; rostellum ovate Capsules broadly ovoid, ovoid-ellipsoid, brown when ripe.