Cottonia


Cottonia is a monotypic genus of flowering plants from the orchid family, Orchidaceae: the only known species is Cottonia peduncularis. It is native to India and Sri Lanka. The genus was erected by Robert Wight and named after Major F. Cotton, an amateur botanist who served in the Madras Engineer Group and collected the species from Tellichery.

This epiphytic orchid has a lip shaped like a hairy bee as in the well-known Ophrys apifera giving it the name of bee-orchid but unlike species in the genus Ophrys, it is not known to be pollinated by any bee. It was first described as Vanda peduncularis by Lindley.