Just what is an orchid anyway?
This question seems to come up time and time again and never really receives a good answer. So I set out to find that answer and make it easy to understand.
The Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew (United Kingdom) list about 880 genera and nearly
22,000 accepted species of orchids, with about 800 new species added each year.
This is about 10% of all known seed bearing plants. Additionally orchid breeders
have registered more than 100,000 hybrids. A typical goal of the hobby
collector is to have one of each!
Some of us it seems have tried to kill one of each...
An Orchid, ANY orchid has 5 characteristics that define it:
1) Orchids are bilaterally symetrical, also known as zygomorphic.
The flower can only be divided in half one way resulting in mirror images.
If you divide it any other way the 2 halves will not be mirror images.
2) One petal of the flower is always highly modified.
One petal does not look like all the others. This one is typically referred to as the lip.
3) The flower's stamens and carpels are always fused.
Stamens and carpels are the male and female parts of the flower
respectively.
4) The seeds are always very tiny and carry no energy source of their own.
This is why we go through so much trouble to propagate them in a laboratory environment.
5) Just to prove things are not always guaranteed, MOST orchid flowers are resupinate!
This is the tough one and not always true. Resupinate means that the flower is seemingly
turned upside down. As an orchid flower develops, the lip (highly modified petal) develops
on the top side of the flower bud. The orchid ALMOST always twists the flower stalk
as the bloom prepares to open, turning the bud upside down from how it developed.
This places the lip at the bottom (A slipper orchid is the classic example of a resupinate
orchid). It is a notable flower characteristic when this does not happen.
If the lip of your orchid is at the top of the flower instead of the
bottom, then your orchid is considered non-resupinate!
More info can be found on Wikipedia.