Orchids

• Title

  Orchids

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton

• Description

  ORCHIDS Orchids form a very large natural family of plants, herbaceous, but the stems of some kinds contain more or less woody tissue. They are various in size and aspect. Some grow in the ground, and are termed terrestrial; some on rocks (saxicolous); many live only attached by their roots to trees (epiphytic) but none are parasitic. Many kinds living in the tropical regions have very large and elegant flowers, and are highly prized for cultivation, but most of those native in Porto Rico bear relatively small flowers; there are, however, some exceptions, and orchid-collectors and the destruction of forests have made these rare, some kinds formerly found here, having, probably, been exterminated. Their stems are almost always unbranched; in many kinds these are peculiarly modified into stout, more or less flattened, or swollen structures, called pseudobulbs; in others the stem is reduced to round, hard, basal structures called corms. The narrow, or broad leaves are parallel-veined. The clustered, or solitary flowers, are perfect, irregular, and highly specialized and complicated; there are 3 sepals,nearly alike, and 3 petals, 2 of them nearly alike, but the other one (the lip) dissimilar, and usually larger; the stamens are variously united with the style into a structure called the column, and this bears, usually, only 1 anther, containing from 2-8 clusters of united pollen (pollinia) attached to a viscid disk (gland); the style is often terminated by a beak (rostellum) the stigma is viscid. The ovary is inferior, 1-celled, and contains many ovules. The fruit is a 3-valved capsule, the numerous seeds minute.