Mystery Plant: Lawn orchid, Zeuxine strateumatica

Which plant group displays the showiest, most flamboyant flowers? Sunflowers and daisies? Lilies, daffodils, and amaryllis? Or maybe the iris family? (It’s fun to ponder this weighty question now, as spring is about to erupt, and not too soon!) But many of us will insist that the most spectacular flowers are found among the various orchid species.

The orchid family truly is a giant group, easily the largest plant family in the world, in terms of number of different species. Orchids as a family cover the earth — almost. They are indeed known from all but the coldest parts of the planet. Many are epiphytic, or growing on the branches of trees, but quite a large number, too, are terrestrial, at home on the ground. (Some are even weeds.) Orchids typically have sheathing leaves on the stems, which are alternating, one at each node. There is a tremendous variety of flower shapes, but they all follow a basic theme. Two very interesting things for some people to realize are that orchid species aren’t all tropical, and that there are plenty of these species that don’t have big, showy corsage-quality blossoms. In fact, some of these species have flowers that are very tiny and inconspicuous. Something else: all orchid species produce a dry capsule as a fruit, and it will be packed with lots of lots of extremely tiny seeds: probably the smallest seeds of any plant group.