Orchid

Common Names: Orchidy

Orchids have a tantalizing affect on people, as evidenced by the many books, artworks, films, and websites devoted to their mystery and beauty. The orchid family is actually the largest and one of the most diverse families of plants and flowers, with upwards of 30,000 species and perhaps another 60,000 hybrids and varieties. However, orchid collecting was so popular starting in the 18th century, that cultivation ran rampant and as a result, many species of orchids are on the endangered list.

Orchids get their name from the Greek term "orchis," meaning "testicle," which describes the appearance of the pseudobulbs in the flower's structure. The word 'orchis' was first used to the describe the flower by Theophrastos, a student of Aristotle who is considered to be the father of botany and ecology.

Nicknamed "the world's most evolved flower," orchids are revered for their ability to adapt to and thrive in unfavorable and unlikely conditions. The majority of orchids grow in tropical, moist rainforests or mountainous or suptropical regions. The flowers anchor themselves to other plants such as trees, cacti or ferns, however, are not parasitic. Other species, including the European varieties, grow along the ground and get their nutrients from the soil. Still other species, like the bird's-nest orchid, grow on rocks and get their nutrients from fungi on the rocks.

"If all of this makes orchids seem smartÑwell, they do seem smart. There is something clever and unplantlike about their determination to survive and their knack for useful deception and their genius for seducing human beings for hundreds and hundreds of years," - Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief : A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Random House: 1998).