Neottia acuminata Schlechter 1924

This species was first mentioned by Lindley (1840) as Neottia micrantha from a discovery made in Siberia. Lindley (1840) notes that it has distinct flowers and is one of the smallest species of the genus. Kuntze (1891) later officially proposed the rejection of the genus Neottia (greek = nest) despite Nidus (lat. = nest) which followed in the name Nidus micranthus. Independently King & Pantling (1896) proposed the name Aphyllorchis parviflora for a seemingly new species from Sikkim, Lachoong Valley at an elevation of 3.000 m. Schlechter (1924) identified and proposed the transfer of this species to the genus Neottia naming it Neottia parviflora and proposed in the same publication the name Neottia acuminata, which is the accepted name today (WCSP). Unfortunately there was no access to this publication yet. Later Ohwi (1931) proposed two more species namely Neottia asiatica and N. subsessilis which were both synonymized with Neottia acuminata in the following years. The latest synonym Neottia oblonga was proposed by Tang & F.T.Wang (1951) as new species from North-West Yunnan, Mekong Ravine from an elevation of 3.000 m. N. acuminata has light yellow flowers and is up to 25 cm tall. The distribution is widespread over East-Asia, from the Himalaya mountain regions, to Taiwan, Japan and Kamchatka (POWO). The Flora of China (eFloras 2021) places this species near N. taibaishanensis which has in contrast no resupinate flowers. N. acuminate has resupinate flowers. Similar in both species is the entire lip and the column is less than 0,5 mm long.