Orchid pic

Orchid picture

Orchidaceae is a diverse and widespread family of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colourful and often fragrant,commonly known as the orchid family. Along with theAsteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering plants. Orchidaceae has about 27,800 currently accepted species, distributed in about 880 genera.[2][3] The determination of which family is larger is still under debate, because verified data on the members of such enormous families are continually in flux. Regardless, the number of orchid species nearly equals the number of bony fishes and is more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species. The family also encompasses about 6–11% of all seed plants.[4] The largest genera are Bulbophyllum (2,000 species), Epidendrum (1,500 species), Dendrobium (1,400 species) and Pleurothallis(1,000 species).

The family also includes Vanilla (the genus of the vanilla plant),Orchis (type genus), and many commonly cultivated plants such as Phalaenopsis and Cattleya. Moreover, since the introduction of tropical species into cultivation in the 19th century, horticulturists have produced more than 100,000hybrids and cultivars.

Orchidaceae are well known for the many structural variations in their flowers.

Some orchids have single flowers, but most have a racemoseinflorescence, sometimes with a large number of flowers. The flowering stem can be basal, that is, produced from the base of the tuber, like in Cymbidium, apical, meaning it grows from the apex of the main stem, like in Cattleya, or axillary, from the leaf axil, as in Vanda.

As an apomorphy of the clade, orchid flowers are primitively zygomorphic (bilaterally symmetrical), although in some genera like Mormodes, Ludisia and Macodes, this kind of symmetry may be difficult to notice.

This app show some pictures of this beautiful flower.