Welcome to Taxonomy of the Genus Globba L. in Thailand

The tribe Globbeae includes four genera, three of which, Globba, Gagnepainia, and Hemiorchis, are native to Thailand, while the fourth genus, Mantisia, has not yet been collected in Thailand. The genus Globba comprising about 89 species (Larsen and Larsen, 2006) is the largest in the Globbeae [1] . In 2006, Larsen and Larsen reported Globba had ca. 42 species in Thailand. These are small perennial herbs with terminal inflorescences. In Thailand, Globba is called ‘Hong Hern’ or ‘Dok Kao Pan-Saa’. Inflorescence position, fruit shape, stamen length and lateral staminode position are distinguished characters for identification [2] . Globba species are distributed throughout tropical (and parts of subtropical) Asia, ranging from India to southern China, south and east to the Philippines and New Guinea (Schumann, 1904), with the center of distribution in monsoonal Southeast Asia, especially Thailand (Larsen, 1996) and Myanmar (Kress et al., 2003).