Flower Plants for Home: Orchids are easy to tell apart from other plants because they have some traits that are very obvious and beautiful. The name of the genus comes from the Greek word órkhis. It is said that John Lindley used the word “orchid” for the first time in his School Botany class in 1845.
The orchid family, Orchidaceae, is a large and diverse group of flowering plants. Most of the flowers in this group are colourful and smell good. There are about 28,000 accepted species in this family.
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About 6–11% of all seed plants are also in this family. More than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars have been made by horticulturists. These are well-known because their flowers have many different shapes.
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They have a unique way of evolving that is called “apomorphy.” The flower is symmetrical on both sides (zygomorphism), there are many resupinate flowers, the labellum is almost always a highly changed petal, the stamens, and carpels are fused, and the seeds are very small.
The orchids may be monopodial, which means that they grow up from one point. Each year, they add leaves to the top, which makes the stem grow longer (specialized lateral growth pattern).
Orchids are all perennial herbs that don’t have any woody parts. Orchids that grow on land can grow from rhizomes, corms, or tubers. Some terrestrial orchids have smooth, white root caps.
Most species make their own food, but some live on dead organic matter (saprophytic) or use a fungus that lives in their roots to help them get food. Epiphytic orchids grow on something else and have changed aerial roots that can be a few meters long at times.
Most orchid leaves are perennial, which means they live for more than 2 years. Other orchids, on the other hand, lose their leaves every year and grow new ones along with new pseudo-bulbs. Some orchids are grown for their pretty leaves.
Some orchids only have one flower, but most have a raceme inflorescence, which can have many flowers on it. Usually, there are 3 sepals on the outside and 3 petals on the inside. Even though they are called “tepals” because they look like petals, the sepals may be very different.
Most of the time, the seeds are very small and there are a lot of them. In some species, there are more than a million seeds in each capsule. When they are ready, they blow away like dust or spores.
Horticultural techniques have been made for germinating orchid seeds on an artificial nutrient medium. This removes the need for the fungus and makes it much easier to grow ornamental orchids.
