Fl. solitary or more rarely a few-fld raceme; floral bract often not differentiated. Per. glab. or minutely scabrid, mostly green; dorsal sepal uppermost, deeply concave and curved, its lateral margins dovetailed into petals to form with them a hood or galea; lateral sepals connate for part or most of their length, the free lobes diverging widely or narrowly, their tips short or long, acuminate to almost filiform; petals falcate with anterior margins shortly adnate to base of lateral sepals, posterior margins free under dorsal sepal, outer surface with a median longitudinal groove into which the slightly involute margin of the dorsal sepal locks. Labellum the smallest of the per.-segs, us. included for most of its length, mobile on a claw attached to column-foot; lamina us. undivided, sts with hairs but us. without calli, produced, at line of junction with claw, into an appendage that is us. strap-shaped and ± laciniate at its free end. Column elongate, its foot ± adnate to base of dorsal sepal, bearing on either side of rostellum a ± quadrangular, partly twisted wing; anther terminal, pollinia 2 per cell, crescentic, soft but coherent; stigma of 2 lobes, us. vertically elongated and occupying middle of column; rostellum immediately below anther and high above stigma with which it is connected by a narrow groove. Plants terrestrial, us. glab.; tubers ovoid to globose, produced close to or at some distance from parent plant. Lvs several, rosette-forming or distributed up flowering stem, almost orbicular to linear. Peduncle in some spp. elongating after fertilization, as capsule matures. Genus of some 60 spp., mainly Australasian, represented also in New Caledonia and New Guinea. Several spp. are common to Australia and N.Z. Pterostylis R. Br. nom. cons.: type sp., P. curta of Australia.