Orchids are really freaking cool. Although not my favourite plant nor flower, they manage to captivate me with their beauty, and well, just really wicked evolved traits. Once the libraries open up again (thanks, coronavirus), I will look for a more detailed book on them, but for right now, I have a mix of Internet and previously obtained knowledge to share.

The Orchidaceae are a family of plants more commonly known as orchids. Many know them for their regal yet tropical look and their long lasting flowers. There are over 28,000 species of them according to our friend, Wikipedia the Great, and typically are classified as “orchids” by their anatomy. I could not find actual criteria for an orchid, but it pretty much seems that most non-orchids are not smart enough to bamboozle us, so anatomy is a good baseline. If the flower can make it past that test, there’s a good chance they’re the real deal. I think if we want any more substantial criteria, we’d have to go ask a taxonomist– they probably do have an actual checklist for what qualifies.

Although orchid appearance varies greatly, the features above should generally be noticeable. You want to look for that bilateral symmetry. The presence of a combined sex organ and a modified third petal (labellum, or lip) are important, too.

Anyways, the orchid has three petals and three sepals in most cases. (I am gonna stop saying “in most cases” now, because there probably are exceptions. We gotta have the basic before we can get the cool, otherwise we won’t appreciate just how cool it is.) Sometimes the sepals are referred to as “tepals,” which sounds like a totally made up word, but just means it’s too petal to be a sepal and too sepal to be a petal. With the sepals, two are lateral and one is dorsal/upper. Makes sense. Same thing with the petals, although since the labellum is a specialized dorsal/upper/median/whatever you wanna call it petal, we just give it its own name and let the other two just be petals for ease and common talk. Also, you may have noticed that the labellum is downward facing here. This is because orchids use resupination to rotate themselves in a way that is conducive for pollinators to drop by. That labellum can attract critters in with its jazzy looks and serve as a landing platform for them. Hot. 

The column is what holds the female and male sex organs, and the anther cap just kinda covers over them and holds the male part away from the stigma (female part). This brings up the interesting point of whether cross or self-pollination is preferred. With these parts so close together, one would imagine that self-pollination is the go-to, but apparently cross pollination is thought to be preferred since they put so much energy into attracting pollinators. Since it is so hard to get pollinated, having the flowers in bloom for such a long time gives a longer window of opportunity. Plus, the colors/size/shape/rotation/scent/timing/heck, the whole labellum/etc. show how evolution clearly favours these really showy displays. Without them, it is probably hard to reproduce via cross-pollination.

Orchids also have even more complications once they have been pollinated. They have large amounts of extremely tiny seeds without endosperm, so they have to find fungi to get some help right away. I know they’re just plants, but this screams r-selected species. I looked it up, and “Orchids: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan” discuss them as being on the r side of things, and most likely stress tolerant ruderals. I was hesitant on this at first since they can live pretty long compared to other plants (they’re not annuals!) but the large amounts of almost microscopic seeds without any provisions from mother could not be k-selected at all. According to the book, the lifespan issue can be counteracted by saying that they commonly die off due to circumstances in their niches– they tend to behave as though they are going to die young, and in the wild, they probably will. Read page 16 on Google Books if you want their better explanation, though.

Happy reading,
​-Beppa

*This is a republished post due to a domain change.*