View allAll Photos Tagged orchids
Last Tuesday I visited the nursery at my local park for the first time this year.
They were preparing the gardens for the 2010 season and in the heated houses I found this beautiful Orchid that was just begging to be photographed.
Orchidaceae are well known for the many structural variations in their flowers.
Some orchids have single flowers but most have a racemose inflorescence, sometimes with a large number of flowers. The flowering stem can be basal, that is produced from the base of the tuber, like in Cymbidium, apical, meaning it grows from the apex of the main stem, like in Cattleya, or axillary, from the leaf axil, as in Vanda.
As an apomorphy of the clade, orchid flowers are primitively zygomorphic (bilaterally symmetrical), although in some genera like Mormodes, Ludisia, Macodes this kind of symmetry may be difficult to notice.
The orchid flower, like most flowers of monocots has two whorls of sterile elements. The outer whorl has three sepals and the inner whorl has three petals. The sepals are usually very similar to the petals (and thus called tepals,), but may be completely distinct.
The upper medial petal, called the labellum or lip,, is always modified and enlarged. The inferior ovary or the pedicel usually rotates 180 degrees, so that the labellum, goes on the lower part of the flower, thus becoming suitable to form a platform for pollinators. This characteristic, called resupination occurs primitively in the family and is considered apomorphic (the torsion of the ovary is very evident from the picture). Some orchids have secondarily lost this resupination, e. g. Zygopetalum and Epidendrum secundum.
The normal form of the sepals can be found in Cattleya, where they form a triangle. In Paphiopedilum (Venus slippers) the lower two sepals are fused together into a synsepal, while the lip has taken the form of a slipper. In Masdevallia all the sepals are fused.
Strobist information:
Cactus flash fired with Cactus V4 trigger on the camera right @1/8, thought a 40cm Softbox.
Canon 430ex II shoot to a white chair on camera left
This orchid in its early morning glory. It was a bit breezy on this day, so, you can see the leaves of the tree in the background moving quite a bit.
...and... by the way, if you stare at this picture longer, you'll be having the feeling that the flower is moving (almost 3 dimensional) Well... it's not the picture that is moving, but your brain!
Original taken in RAW so you won't be able to see the EXIF data.
Common Name The Twisted Dendrobium - In Thailand - Khao kiu
Flower Size 2.8 to 3.1" [7 to 8 cm]
Found in Assam India, Bangladesh, Andaman Islands, Malaysia, Myanamar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam at elevations around 1220 meters as a small to medium sized, hot to cool, ascending to pendant growing epiphyte, terrestrial or lithophyte with club to spindle shaped, grooved and medially flattened stems with tubular leaf sheaths carrying 3 to 4, thin, deciduous, curved, leathery, sharply pointed leaves that blooms on an axillary, 1.6 to 3.1" [4 to 8 cm] long, few [2 to 3] flowered inflorescence arising from the upper leaf axils of leafless canes with longlasting, fragrant flowers occuring in the late winter and early summer. Water and fertilizer should be drastcally reduced in the winter months and resumed with the onset of new growth in the spring.
Synonyms Dendrobium dartoisianum De Wild 1906; Dendrobium haniffi Ridl. ex Burkill 1924 - orchidspecies.com
Phalaenopsis (Blume 1825) is a genus of approximately 60 species of orchids (family Orchidaceae). The abbreviation in the horticultural trade is Phal. Phalaenopsis is one of the most popular orchids in the trade, through the development of many artificial hybrids.
Description
The generic name means "Phalaen[a]-like" and is probably a reference to the genus Phalaena, the name given by Carolus Linnaeus to a group of large moths; the flowers of some species supposedly resemble moths in flight. For this reason, the species are sometimes called Moth orchids.
They are native throughout southeast Asia from the Himalayan mountains to the islands of Polillo and Palawan of the Philippines and northern Australia. Orchid Island off Taiwan is named after this orchid. Little is known about their habitat and their ecology in nature since little field research has been done in the last decades.
Phalaenopsis aphrodite (Moon Orchid)
Most are epiphytic shade plants; a few are lithophytes. In the wild they are typically found below the canopies of moist and humid lowland forests, protected against direct sunlight, but equally in seasonally dry or cool environments. The species have adapted individually to these three habitats.
Phalaenopsis shows a monopodial growth habit. An erect growing rhizome produces from the top one or two alternate, thick and fleshy, elliptical leaves a year. The older, basal leaves drop off at the same rate. The plant retains in this way four to five leaves. If very healthy, they can have up to ten or more leaves. They have no pseudobulbs. The raceme appears from the stem between the leaves. They bloom in their full glory for several weeks. If kept in the home, they usually last two to three months.
Some Phalaenopsis species in Malaysia are known to use subtle weather cues to coordinate mass flowering.
More informations on the Link below: