Orchids

Title: The Little Book of Orchids
Author: Genevieve Carbon, Yves Delange, Jean-Claude Gachet, Mireille Lemercier
Publisher: Flammarion
Year: 2002

This handy book is all about orchids. It covers the story of orchids, the botany (species, reproduction, anatomy, and symbiosis), orchid growing (techniques and care) as well as its history seen from the perspectives of commerce, arts and symbolism.

The Story of Orchids

Orchids are one of the largest of all plant families. They flourished worldwide, in both hemispheres, blooming from the equator to the poles. The range of their shapes, sizes and colors is tremendous, but orchids all share a very particular flower structure and idiosyncratic reproductive system. The orchid’s special biological makeup makes it dependant on insects for pollination and on specific fungi for nutrients.

Some people, such as adventuresome botanists, plant or intrepid orchid hunters always try to look for new species of orchids.

Orchids love threesomes. In fact, for them it takes three, not two, to tango: flower, insect and fungus. The orchid flower’s structure itself is triple, with three sepals, three petals, three stamens, and sometimes three carpels.



A limited number of orchids self-pollinate. But the majority needs the help of an insect to propagate. Different orchids require specific insects. Orchids and insects often have symbiotic relationships.

Orchids reply on internal fungi to provide them with nutrients. Before this fact was discovered by the French botanist Noel Bernard in 1989, orchids couldn’t be grown from seed by humans. In the earliest stages of germination, fungus plays a major role in orchid growth. The orchids and fungus often develop a symbiotic relationship as well.

Most orchids like humus-rich potting compounds for their roots. Air and soil should be kept humid and moist, but allowed to dry periodically during the plants’ dormant phases.

Under favorable climate conditions orchids will flower every year. After blooming, if pollination occurs, the ovary swells to produce the fruit, a capsule with three valves which dries upon maturity and release tiny seeds.

Orchids can be used as foodstuffs. For example, in Madagascar, Australia and Tasmania colonist called the tubers of Gastrodia sesamoidas “native potatoes”, on the islands of Madagascar, Mauiritius and Reunionm the leaves of Angraecum fragrance are dried and drunk as herbal tea, sometimes in combination with other tea leaves.