The Mystery Behind Growing Perfect Orchids

Sakura Flower Mystery -

The beginnings of the orchid family are shrouded in mystery. Dr. E. Soysa, writing in Orchid Culture in Ceylon, advances the delightful and plausible, if unproved, theory that orchids antedated the fossil era, but in their love of light ascended trees to escape the advancing jungle. Whatever the genesis of the orchid family, it cannot be doubted that the orchid family is very old, judging both by its great variety and its highly complex structural development, attainable only through the passage of time.

The orchid is among the largest and most highly developed of the plant families, with some fifteen to twenty thousand species.

Nature has decreed that the orchid should be dependent on some outside insect agent, and the resultant relation is a beautiful example of cooperation between the plant and animal kingdoms. The highest means of perpetuation in plants, cross pollination is necessary in all but a very few species of orchids. In the few cases of self pollination the seeds are frequently infertile.

The insects performing the service of cross pollination vary with the species and are as diverse as the ingenious contrivances by which the orchids utilize them. This starry white flower, a rare orchid of Madagascar, has a weirdly elongated lip containing a nectary, about eleven inches long, that holds one and a half ounces of the sweet fluid produced by the sugar secreting glands. Darwin immediately predicted that some day a moth with a proboscis at least twelve inches long would be discovered to be responsible for cross pollination of this peculiar orchid.

This specialization is reflected in the extremely varied forms of the reproductive organs. The stigmatic cavity with its receptive ovum (egg) waits for the `marrying` insect to deposit pollen from another flower.

The Mystery Orchids -