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 A study of native Orchids
Orchid for short, Orchidaceae officially. The Orchid family represents the most extensive family of flowering plant. The Orchid is renowned for it's flamboyant, unique, and exotic flowers. Classified as a 'perennial' it's a popular plant, but has been much misunderstood. Seductive and delicate, the Orchid has an aura of being difficult to cultivate. Whilst it would be churlish to suggest an Orchid would grow in any condition, they are far from troublesome, and are ideal as a house plant. Indeed, they can thrive indoors. Orchids are usually placed within distinct groups, such as,
Terrestrials are the more hardy variety of Orchid. Capable of withstanding frost in more testing climates. They have even been found close to Antarctica. Virtually all temperate Orchids are this variety. Epiphytes on the other hand thrive in tropical conditions and anchor themselves to trees and shrubs. They are partially responsible for the Orchids reputation as requiring more care. Epiphyes do need special compost, and usually require to be grown under glass. Their flower does tend to be more showy. Lithophytes are similar to Epiphtes, but grow on rocks or in rocky conditions. It's quite a task to list all the species of Orchid. Some, such as Kew, place the number at around twenty two thousand. But some sources place the number even higher, at around twenty five thousand. Because additional Orchid species are added per year, within the hundreds. This number is subject to change. The most well known species of Orchid is probably the 'Vanilla' plant. Due to the mind bogglingly high number of species, it's easier to class Orchid by their Genus. Genus means closely related species. Genus can interbreed however. Kew put the number of Orchid genus at eight hundred and eighty. We can then break down Orchids by their most popular genus, which are Bulbophyllum, Epidendrum and Dendrobium. Each of these number over one thousand species per genus. The vast majority of genus are found in tropical climates, such as Africa, Asia and South America. The number of genus in temperate climates, such as Europe and North America is much lower. It's only in the last two hundred years that European horticulturists have had access to tropical species, and have catalogued them. Taxonomy is the science of classification. Taxonomy of the orchid family has evolved during the past one hundred and fifty years. History states that the process of recognising Orchid genus began in 1953 with the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus. He only noted eight, but this was soon expanded upon by De Jussieu (the first to classify Orchidaceae separately), John Lindley, and George Bentham. In the past one hundred years, a few of the main contributors to Orchid classification, in no particular order, Rudolf Mansfeld (orchid flora of Cameroon), JJ Vermeulen (orchids of Borneo) and Dr. Pamela Burns-Balogh. Robert Louis Dressler is debatable the primary contributor to classification in the past fifty years. He has published a number of books, which classify and discuss the history of Orchids. Widely speaking, his classification is accepted by a good majority of botanists. However, his taxonomy was regularly updated, every three years during the 1980's. Although Dressler has provided one of the best classifications to date, improvements can always be made, especially with such an extensive plant family as Orchidaceae. Dressler's work sets out the following groups,
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