Brownleea is a genus of flowering plants from the family Orchidaceae native to Africa and Madagascar.Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant Families Eight species are known.
Brownleea coerulea Harv. ex Lindl. Brownleea galpinii Bolus Brownleea graminicola McMurtry Brownleea macroceras Sond. Brownleea maculata P.J.Cribb Brownleea mulanjiensis H.P.Linder Brownleea parviflora Harv. ex Lindl. Brownleea recurvata Sond.
In a classification of orchids that was published in 2015, the genera Brownleea and Disperis constituted the subtribe Brownleeinae of the tribe Orchideae.Mark W. Chase, Kenneth M. Cameron, John V. Freudenstein, Alec M. Pridgeon, Gerardo A. Salazar, Cássio van den Berg, and André Schuiteman. 2015. "An updated classification of Orchidaceae". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 177(2):151-174. A sister relationship between Brownleea and Disperis received only weak statistical support in a 2009 study.Richard J. Waterman, Anton Pauw, Timothy G. Barraclough, and Vincent Savolainen. 2009. "Pollinators underestimated: A molecular phylogeny reveals widespread floral convergence in oil-secreting orchids (sub-tribe Coryciinae) of the Cape of South Africa". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 51(1):100-110. . In Genera Orchidacearum, the subtribe Brownleeinae was placed in the tribe Diseae,Alec M. Pridgeon, Phillip J. Cribb, Mark W. Chase, and Finn N. Rasmussen. 1999-2014. Genera Orchidacearum Oxford University Press. (volume 1), (volume 2), (volume 3), (volume 4), (volume 5), (volume 6) but this tribe is no longer recognized because it has been shown to be paraphyletic over the tribe Orchideae.
See also List of Orchidaceae genera
References
Further reading Berg Pana, H. 2005. Handbuch der Orchideen-Namen. Dictionary of Orchid Names. Dizionario dei nomi delle orchidee. Ulmer, Stuttgart