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Herbs, perennial, rather succulent. Roots few, slender, fleshy. Stems scapose; corm slender to stout, fleshy; sheathing bracts usually 2, partially cloaking stem. Leaves produced in autumn, withering spring, solitary, arising from corm, plicate, leathery. Inflorescences terminal, each with 1 flower, arising from corm; floral bract with color of stem or sepals, reduced to prominent. Flowers solitary, resupinate, horizontal to slightly nodding, large, showy; sepals and petals ascending to erect; lip slipper-shaped, with basal orifice and 2 horns near apex, margin of lip dilated, forming bearded, apronlike lamina; pollinarium solitary; pollinia 4, flattened, superposed in 2 pairs flanking axis of pollinarium; viscidia large, quadrangular; stigma concave. Fruits capsules.
Sep and lateral pet lance-linear, similar, ascending over the lip; lip saccate, shoe-shaped, declined, narrowed to the shortly bifid summit, the distal part covered by a delicate transparent apron; column broadly oval, petaloid, overhanging the lip; anther sessile on the lower side of the column just beneath the tip, each locule with a bifid pollinium; perennial from a corm with coralloid roots, producing in autumn a single basal lf that persists through the next anthesis, and in the spring sending up a lfless scape bearing 2 or 3 sheathing bracts and at the summit a solitary, nodding, nectarless fl subtended by a linear bract. Monotypic.
