A new species of terrestrial orchid Habenaria nicobarica Murugan, Alappatt, Prabhu & Arisdason sp. nov. is described from South Nicobar Islands. Key to species of Habenaria in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, illustration and photograph of the new species are also provided.
IntroductionOrchidaceae include c. 788 genera (Mabberley, 2008) and c. 25,971 species (Joppa et al., 2011) and distributed widely in the world. In India, orchids are represented by 184 genera and 1129 species (Jalal et al., 2008), of which 150 species belonging to 59 genera are found in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.The Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India is a repository of diverse species, including 25 endemic orchid species (Misra et al., 2012). The genus Habenaria Willd. is estimated to have approximately 750 species and distributed in every continent of the world (Comber, 1990). Among these, 100 species are recorded from India (Santapau and Henry, 1973) and only 1 species, namely H. andamanica Hook. f., is reported from Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Choudhury et al., 2011).During the course of botanical explorations in Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve and Little Nicobar Tribal Reserve, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, from 2008 to 2011, the authors have collected few interesting specimens of Habenaria. On critical study of the specimens and perusal of literature (Hooker, 1890;Jayaweera, 1981;Comber, 1990;Chowdhery, 1998;Mathew, 1998;Sinha, 1999;Pandey and Diwakar, 2008), the authors found it as an undescribed species, which is very closely allied to Habenaria koodersii J. J. Sm., but differs in leaf, flower and lip characters (Table 1). Hence, it is described here as a new species, viz., Habenaria nicobarica along with key to species, illustration and photograph, for further collection and identification in the field.
