January 5th, 2010 Mystery of Growing Orchids
The beginnings of the orchid family are shrouded in mystery. Since most orchids are epiphytic that is, having aerial roots through which they accept sustenance from the minerals in the damp loaded air of the tropics they have left no traces such as the fossilized vestiges of ground upward plants. Dr. E. Soysa, text in Orchid Culture in Ceylon, advances the delightful and plausible, if unproved, concept the orchids antedated the fossil era, but in their passion of light ascended plants to discharge the advancing jungle. There they lived, died, dried up, and floated away, departure no remnant. Whatever the start of the orchid family, it cannot be doubted that the orchid family is very old, judging both by its great range and its well center structural development, attainable only through the passage of time. The orchid is among the major and most decidedly urbanized of the hide families, with some fifteen to twenty thousand species. A sagacious sort has lavished every means to insure the perpetuation of this darling newborn. She has provided the flower with all the charm and pull of a fairy princess to win insect vassals to execute the sacrament of annoyed pollination. Nature has decreed that the orchid should be dependant on some past insect agent, and the secondary relative is a wonderful example of cooperation between the bury and animal kingdoms. The premier means of perpetuation in plants, obstruct pollination is required in all but a very few species of orchids. In the few bags of person pollination the seeds are frequently arid. The insects performing the mass of irritable pollination adapt with the species and are as diverse as the ingenious contrivances by which the orchids develop them. It is in every defense a reciprocal arrangement, the deposit receiving the repayment of fertilization, the insect the largess of food and drink. Each species typically has its particular insect, as is exposed by the unusual means each flower uses to attract its insect. Darwin first renowned a stunning example of this specialization. On a stumble to South America he had an opportunity to see a yard of Angraecum sesquipedale. This starry colorless flower, a rare orchid of Madagascar, has a curiously elongated lip containing a nectary, about eleven inches long, that holds one and the half ounces of the adorable fluid formed by the honey secreting glands. Darwin immediately predicted that some day a moth with an antenna at slightest twelve inches long would be discovered to be responsible for cross pollination of this abnormal orchid. In time such a moth was found and was duly named Xanthopan morgani praedicta. In this particular alliance it is probable that the moth would starve lacking the orchid and that the orchid would become destroyed lacking the moth. Such high specialization has insured the purity of species that has manifest the evolve of the orchid family. This specialization is reflected in the really mixed forms of the reproductive organs. These organs lie within the lip, more scientifically known as the labellum, along a fleshy enlargement called the string. The anther effected stamens are regularly sealed together into the stake, and a projection of this elongated fleshy organ is the rostellum, whose objective seems to be to split the pollen and the stigmatic nook, hence minimizing the jeopardy of self pollination. The anthers produce tiny fine grains of bountiful pollen, commonly seized together by a mysterious viscid fluid that hardens on exposure to air and is not affected by coil or spit. The stigmatic cavity with its bright ovum (egg) waits at the `marrying` insect to deposit pollen from another flower.
Tags: Growing, Mystery, orchids