It is a mistake to believe that all the different kinds of orchids may be counted on the fingers of one hand. This bland assumption was made originally by Carl Linné, often called the father of botany because he established the binomial system of plant classification. Later, in his eighteenth-century annals, Linné wrote that the world when finally explored would yield, perhaps, as many as 100 kinds of orchids, including the ninety he already knew about. Exploration still is incomplete—and botanists have discovered and named more than 16,000 distinct orchid species.

All orchids do not come from a few countries within the equatorial belt, nor are all orchids necessarily tropical. Orchids have been discovered in nearly every country in the world, excepting the arid and the perpetually frozen regions. And although the most beautiful orchids, such as cattleyas and odontoglossums, do come from tropical latitudes, they live in the temperate climate of great mountain ranges. They are largely natives of plateaus 5,000 to 10,000 feet high where the climate is not dissimilar to the southern parts of the United States and where the air temperature is often cooler than that of our autumn days. The Orchid of the Clouds, Oncidium nubigenum, is only found at an altitude of 14,000 feet where snow is a constant companion. Few orchids grow in the torrid, swampy lowlands, and most of them are not worth collecting. In most cases, as orchids descend below 2,000 feet and as they travel north and south above and below the thirtieth parallels, they become uniformly more insignificant and more terrestrial.

It is a mistake to believe that all orchids are short-lived. Actually, they have a tenacious hold on life and an unusual ability to survive difficulties. Most orchids torn from their native trees, sun-dried, crated, and shipped 3,000 miles retain sufficient vigor to break into new growth as soon as replanted. Extremely tender cypripediums have withstood a four-month ocean voyage, although some, like sobralias, may not last longer than six weeks.

Dr. Fritz W. Went, of the California Institute of Technology, made some casual orchid experiments while living in Java. He fastened several orchid plants, the kind that have food storage organs, beneath glass cones and hung them outdoors. They had no visible food supply and no access to rain, yet three years later they were still alive, demonstrating only their toughness and ability to survive on the limited amount of moisture contained in the air that circulated around their roots. An orchid hunter, Colonel William Benson, located a Saccalobium giganteum in Burma which was, by conservative standards, over a hundred years old. The botanist Trevor Lawrence once remarked, "I do not see why they [orchids] should ever die!" Living so long and stubbornly, orchids make a sound capital investment either for pleasure or profit. Most orchid flowers also are long lasting. They do not fall to pieces or shed their petals. Some may last from six weeks, cut, to three months on plants. Cymbidium lowianum has been known to hold its flowers for six months.
 
All orchid flowers are not beautiful. Most of them are small and insignificant. About 120 kinds of orchids (goo varieties) are grown for their beauty, odd shapes, or ease of culture. Only anoectochilus is occasionally grown for foliage—exquisite gold-and-silver-veined purple leaves—but its culture is not yet understood; probably because no one has studied its growth requirements. Neither are orchids as floriferous, or as barren, as is commonly supposed. Equatorial cypripediums bloom once a year and have a single flower. Cattleyas may have from one to ten blooms. Onci-diums and other spray orchids produce from one to several hundred flowers. Incidentally, no plant, common or otherwise, has ever topped the record of a Dendrochilum filiforme which had over 16,000 flowers at one time. Other than Oncidium. papilio and Masdevalia octhodes, which bloom continuously, most orchids bloom once a year, although cattleya hybrids may flower twice or more in one year.

It is a mistake to believe that all orchid flowers are pink or white, or the much-abused orchid lavender. The colors range through every known shade and hue—and add a few bizarre combinations of their own: mustard yellow, chocolate brown, regency blue, empire green, and reds which Titian would have given his soul to duplicate. The only hue not found in orchids is black. The mysterious, long-sought and never found black orchid is an optical illusion; seen from a distance, a dark blue, purple, or brown orchid flower may sometimes seem black. You can have black orchids, though, but it is a trick. White flowers are cut from the plant and dipped in a special water-soluble black dye.

The belief that all orchids look alike is erroneous. Their foliage is often dissimilar; flower shapes are many and frequently fantastic. Sometimes the adaption to nature is so complete that the flowers resemble the insects that pollinate them. Orchids which have gone in for mimicry inelude Bee, Fly, Moth, and Butterfly orchids. Others may bear an actual or fanciful resemblance to people or animals such as Dove, Swan, and Dancing Lady orchids. Some of them have gone in for odd and not so charming shapes as Frog, Lizard, Toad, and Monkey orchids. Some grow more beautiful, or larger, after the flowers appear. Phrag-mipedìum caudatum has sepals three inches long when the flower opens. In the next few days the sepals elongate until they are two feet or more in length, reaching to the ground. Naturalists explain this by saying that the plant depends on crawling insects for reproduction.

It is frequently said that the most beautiful plants in nature are the least useful to men. In great part this is true of orchids. But wasn't it Victor Hugo who said, "The beautiful is as useful as the useful—perhaps more so"? Other than their flowers orchids produce only two commercial commodities: vanilla and salep. Vanilla, a Peruvian introduction to our cookery flavorings, is the diluted extract of an aromatic oil exuded from the ripe seed pods of Vanilla planifolia. Salep, once an herb doctor's prescription for every ailment from arthritis to zymosis, is now a baby food and a dessert. The tubers of Orchis mascula and allied species, are dried, ground, and mixed with milk to make a mush. A pudding as good as tapioca is made from congealed salep.

It is a mistake to believe that all orchids are scentless. Many have the most pleasing fragrances in the plant kingdom, such as spice, musk, primrose, violet, and rhubarb. Some, like Bulbophyllum beccarii, release the foulest carrion odors known. Several are fragrant in the morning, less so toward evening; one of them, a variety of Dendro-bium nobile, is sometimes slightly malodorous at night.

With all these differences in shape, size, color, and habitat, what is an orchid? Offhand it would seem that this generously distributed and adaptable family has produced nothing but confusion. In spite of these apparent inconsistencies the basic structure of all orchid flowers is essentially identical. All orchids possess two or three features in common, one of which is not found in any other plant. Look at the accompanying illustration and see for yourself how an orchid flower is put together in three parts.

THE STRUCTURE OF AN ORCHID FLOWER

Sepals + Petals (and Lip) + Column = Complete Flowers

First, there are the sepals, which are inclined to be narrow. They are the protective covering of the bud and are green until the bud is ready to open; then they rapidly change to white, yellow, or some other color or combination of colors.

Second, each orchid flower has three petals; two of them look alike, but the other is modified into the strange, beautiful, and useful appendage botanists call a lip. Usually the lip is the gaudiest part of the flower, the most spectacularly colored, and the weirdest in shape. Although you wouldn't guess it, the lip is upside down. Except for a half-dozen species, all orchid flowers are reversed. Watch an orchid bud as it enlarges. Several days before it opens, the bud—in a twenty-four-hour period—will revolve through an arc of l80° in a clockwise direction. Orchids bearing two, three, or more flowers on a single stem have what is known as differential rotation in order to get their lips into position. Flowers opposite each other rotate in opposite directions—one to the left, the other to the right; the top flower simply bends down. This, rotating movement causes the peculiar half-twist so often seen on the pedicles, or ovaries, that support the flowers. It places the lips in the correct position for flying insects to use as landing strips.

Third and most important, the stamens and pistils of orchids are united in one fleshy column. At the top of the stamen and pistil column, and hinged to it, are the pollen masses. A slight touch beneath the column will unhinge the pollen wafers, making them stick to your finger. Catasetum saccatum has the further mechanical ability, when the lip is pushed down, of throwing its pollen several feet outward. Behind the pollen, separated by a thin membrane, is the stigmatic concavity. At the base of the column, below the petals, is the ovary, which also acts as a stem connecting the flower to the plant. This column is typical of orchids alone. It is not found in any other plant family.

There is an exception to these floral characteristics. Cypripediums have an evolutionary innovation. They have no lip. Two of their petals are combined to form a pouch which somewhat fancifully resembles the toe of a lady's heel-less slipper.

And there you have an orchid—or, rather, what makes an orchid.

Horticulturally, there are four types of orchids: mono-podials, sympodials, terrestrials, and epiphytes. There are more common names, but they are not always accurate in their meaning. In the long run, you will learn that nothing is so pleasing as the use of correct terminology. Fur thermore, these names indicate several of the important cultural requirements of orchids.

 
MONOPODIAL ("ONE-STEM") ORCHIDS

Top: Vanda; Angraecum

Bottom: Phalaenopsis; Renanthera

Monopodial (one-stem) orchids, are plants that grow in one direction only.

Their single stems lengthen indefinitely season after season. Their blooms are produced from the leaf axils. Some, like phalaenopsis, may be only a few inches tall; others, like vandas, will grow to eighteen feet. A Galeola altissima was once discovered that reached to 120 feet. Culturally, the monopodials are a bit more troublesome than is expected of orchids; they have no storage organs in which to keep reserves of food and water and must be attended constantly. They are primarily natives of regions like the Philippines where it rains every day, so that their water supply is certain, and continuous.

Sympodial orchids, however, have storage organs and are uniformly tough. They are more likely to be grown because of their easier culture and because they include the greatest number of the most beautiful orchids. Sympodial means "with stems." At the end of one season the main stem—of a laelia, for example—stops its growth, ripens, and produces flowers from the apical end. At the beginning of the next favorable season a lateral growth, called a lead, is initiated at the base of the old stem, and the cycle of growth is repeated. Because of this habit of growth, sym-podials never get out of bounds. They aren't so tall that they are unwieldy to handle; a few, though, have been grown to a diameter of three feet.

SYMPODIAL ("WITH STEMS") ORCHIDS

Top: Dendrobium; cypripedium

Bottom: Epidendrum; Epidendrum

The stems of most sympodial orchids, as they develop, swell a bit around the middle, like men acquiring paunches. When completed, the swellings are bulbous in shape. They perform all the functions of normal bulbs except reproduction; hence, botanists call them pseudobulbs ("false bulbs"). They store food and mildly regulate the passage of water during seasonal dry spells. However, in areas where it rains nearly every day there are sympodial orchids, usually terrestrials, that have little or no pseudobulb development. Free access to continuous moisture has made storage organs unnecessary. Culturally, such orchids as sobralias and the weedy epidendrums are often classed with monopodials in so far as they require readily available moisture.

 
SYMPODIAL ("WITH STEMS") ORCHIDS

Top: Calanthe; Brassavola

Bottom: Onddium; Laelia

It is almost axiomatic that the larger the pseudobulbs the larger the flowers. Yet colossal pseudobulbs are not desirable. They remain too soft to produce flowers. Well-grown, well-ripened pseudobulbs are a satisfaction to orchidists, for they are the first indication of cultural success. Most pseudobulbs will not exceed a few inches in length or breadth. Contrariwise, the Cow Horn Orchid (Schom-burgkia tibicinis) has pseudobulbs out of all proportion to the size of the flowers. Sometimes two feet in length, their hollowed shells are used by cannibal ants as homes and by the Indians of Honduras as signal horns.

The materials on which orchids grow separate the tribe into the last two commonly used divisions: epiphytes and terrestrials. The term "epiphyte" does not mean "air plant," although it is often so construed. Correctly translated it means a "plant which grows upon another." It describes orchids growing on trees, shrubs, or rocks, their roots seldom touching the ground. These orchids require a very special compost in captivity. Terrestrials, on the other hand, are those whose roots grow only in the ground. Their composts do not need so much attention.

Botanists add further subclassifications: semiepiphytes and semiterrestrials. They include orchids that grow in the ground or on trees with equal readiness. Customarily, such orchids are treated as epiphytes in culture, although many respond well to soil composts.

This, for all practical purposes, is all you need to know about the botany of orchids. Remember, though, these four basic classifications are not interexclusive. A mono-podial orchid can be either terrestrial or epiphytic. A terrestrial orchid may be either sympodial or monopodial; and not a few of them have corms and tubers, much the same as gladioli and dahlias. Some orchids are deciduous, another clue to their specific water requirements.

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