English: Ghostplants
Genus: 20 species.
Region: warm temperate and tropical regions of the Caribbean, Central America and South America, Africa.
Habitat: dark, in deep forests.
BotanyPerennial herbs; without chlorophyll; myco-heterotrophs, parasitism upon fungi.
Roots: thick, densely clustered forming a "birds nest" that house their fungus host.
Stems: pallid; with reduced scale-like foliage.
Flowers: single or in corymbs of many individual flowers; white or yellow, also blue and pink.
Dispersion: by wind.
TaxonomyVoyria is subdivided into two subgenera, Voyria and. Leiphaimos contains the majority of the species and has highly reduced features, lacking stomates and a continuous vascular cylinder. The lack of chloroplast genes has caused some difficulty in better understanding its relationships within the family.