Voyria

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Voyria
Voyria tenella
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Gentianales
Family:	Gentianaceae
Genus:	Voyria L.
Species
See text
Synonyms
Leiphaimos Schltdl. & Cham.

Voyria, commonly known as ghostplants,^[1] is a genus of 20 species^[2] of herbaceous perennial plants, belonging to the family Gentianaceae. They are mostly native to warm temperate and tropical regions of the Caribbean, Central America and South America, except for V. primuloides, which is found in West and Central Africa. V. parasitica reaches as far north as the Everglades in Florida.

Unlike most plants, they do not contain chlorophyll; they are myco-heterotrophs, getting their food through parasitism upon fungi rather than photosynthesis. Their roots are thick and densely clustered, forming a "birds nest" that house their fungus host. Depending on the species, the flowers can be single or held in corymbs of many individual flowers. The stems are usually pallid, with reduced scale-like foliage. The flowers can vary in colour, with white or yellow predominating, and blue and pink also occurring. Like all myco-heterotrophs, they are capable of living in very dark conditions, such as the floor of deep forests, because they no longer derive energy from sunlight.

Voyria is subdivided into two subgenera, Voyria and Leiphaimos. The latter, which contains a majority of the species, is characterized by highly reduced features, lacking both stomates and a continuous vascular cylinder. The lack of chloroplast genes has caused some difficulty in better understanding its relationships within the family. Seeds are dispersed by wind.^[3]