Monographs Details:
Authority:
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
Family:
Orchidaceae
Orchidaceae
Description:
Family Description - Fls perfect, irregular, usually resupinate (twisted in ontogeny so that the morphologically adaxial side appears to be abaxial); sep 3 (or 2 by fusion), green or colored, often resembling the lateral pet; pet 3, usually colored or white, the 2 lateral ones consimilar and evidently different from the third (typically the lowest) one, called the lip; stamen typically one, adnate to the style on the opposite side from the lip, forming a usually stout stylar column with the bilocular anther terminal or subterminal and separated from the proper stigmatic surface by an enlarged rostellum derived from the adjacent stigma-lobe, the 2 functional stigma-lobes often connate (in Cypripedium 2 anthers and an expanded staminode borne on the column, which lacks a rostellum); pollen monadinous and only loosely coherent in Cypripedium, in our other genera tetradinous and organized into 1–6 pollinia in each locule of the anther; one end of a pollinium often prolonged into a slender tip attached to a sticky pad, the viscidium (a detachable portion of the rostellum), the viscidium and its attached pollinium or pollinia collectively forming a pollinarium; ovary inferior, unilocular, with very numerous, late-developing ovules on 3 expanded parietal placentas; fr mostly capsular, opening by 3(6) longitudinal slits but remaining closed top and bottom; seeds countless, minute; embryo mostly undifferentiated, only seldom with a barely recognizable cotyledon; endosperm wanting; strongly mycotrophic (sometimes nongreen) perennial herbs (many of the tropical ones epiphytic) with alternate (seldom opposite or whorled), parallel-veined, often somewhat fleshy lvs sheathing at base, the fls solitary or more often in racemes, spikes, or panicles; generally individually subtended by a bract. 600/15,000+.
Family Description - Fls perfect, irregular, usually resupinate (twisted in ontogeny so that the morphologically adaxial side appears to be abaxial); sep 3 (or 2 by fusion), green or colored, often resembling the lateral pet; pet 3, usually colored or white, the 2 lateral ones consimilar and evidently different from the third (typically the lowest) one, called the lip; stamen typically one, adnate to the style on the opposite side from the lip, forming a usually stout stylar column with the bilocular anther terminal or subterminal and separated from the proper stigmatic surface by an enlarged rostellum derived from the adjacent stigma-lobe, the 2 functional stigma-lobes often connate (in Cypripedium 2 anthers and an expanded staminode borne on the column, which lacks a rostellum); pollen monadinous and only loosely coherent in Cypripedium, in our other genera tetradinous and organized into 1–6 pollinia in each locule of the anther; one end of a pollinium often prolonged into a slender tip attached to a sticky pad, the viscidium (a detachable portion of the rostellum), the viscidium and its attached pollinium or pollinia collectively forming a pollinarium; ovary inferior, unilocular, with very numerous, late-developing ovules on 3 expanded parietal placentas; fr mostly capsular, opening by 3(6) longitudinal slits but remaining closed top and bottom; seeds countless, minute; embryo mostly undifferentiated, only seldom with a barely recognizable cotyledon; endosperm wanting; strongly mycotrophic (sometimes nongreen) perennial herbs (many of the tropical ones epiphytic) with alternate (seldom opposite or whorled), parallel-veined, often somewhat fleshy lvs sheathing at base, the fls solitary or more often in racemes, spikes, or panicles; generally individually subtended by a bract. 600/15,000+.
Common Names:
The orchid family
The orchid family