Thismia tectipora Cowie

Cowie, I.D. & Liddle, D.T. (2016) Nuytsia 27: 87-91. Type: "Melville Island [near Paru], Northern Territory [precise locality withheld for conservation reasons], 18 February 2010, D.T. Liddle, N.A. Trikojus & N. Hunter 3603 (holo: DNA D0196145, spirit only)."

Plants lack chlorophyll, stems to 75 mm long, rather fleshy, colourless, with a cluster of apparently 2 leaves and 3 bracts subtending the flower; roots coralloid, terete, densley clustered.

Leaves alternate, scale-like, apparently white, 4-6 mm long, more or less truncate to 3-lobed at apex. Bracts ovate, ca. 8 mm long, white; apex cucullate, grey-brown.

Flowers solitary and terminal, actinomorphic, fungiform, ca. 12.5 mm long (excluding mitre-process), pink or reddish, apparently borne just above the soil surface. Perianth tube ca. 7 mm long x 5 mm diameter, apparently trigonous, more or less smooth, white at base, dark grey-purple above with darker vertical lines. Mitre operculate, forming a thickened, fleshy, pink, verrucose cap c. 6 mm long, covered with sub-appressed, scale-like, ± triangular verrucae; lower margin of mitre reflexed and extending downwards over the upper perianth tube, with 3 slightly longer, obtuse lobes covering the 3 pores at the junction of the perianth tube and mitre; pores oblong-elliptic, c. 2.5 mm wide, 0.7 mm high; mitre-process apical, central, solitary, erect, long-attenuate, c. 30 mm long, becoming filiform below the clavate, indistinctly lobed, reddish apex. Stamens 6, apparently colourless, inverted and the filaments dilated, free at base with pores between the filaments, laterally connate proximally into a cylinder attached at the apex of the perianth tube, c. 5.5 mm long, the staminal tube included in and parallel to the perianth tube; anthers extrorse, each with 2 separated, linear thecae c. 1.6 mm long lying longitudinally near each suture and extending from 1.4 mm above the point of attachment of staminal tube with the perianth tube to 2 mm below apex of connective; anther appendages c. 2 mm long, each with a quadrangular lateral appendage at the lower end on the adaxial surface and protruding outwards to the perianth tube; free apical part of the connective with a rounded to weakly retuse apical lobe; nectariferous gland present between appendages. Style c. 1 mm long; stigmatic lobes 3, erect, flattened, oblong, c. 1.5 mm long, minutely papillose; ovary inferior, unilocular, c. 2 mm long, flattened at apex; placentas 3, free, globular, on columns attached to the base of the loculus; ovules numerous.

Fruit and seeds not seen.

Features not available.

Occurs in NT, known from several collections on Melville Island. Collected in or at the margins of spring-fed evergreen rainforest.