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WDS Publishing
West Australian Orchids
West Australian Orchids
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Orchids are usually termed the aristocrats of plant life. The presence of over 130 species in Western Australia adds considerable interest to the study of her magnificent and world-famous flora.
The order or family Orchidaceae was originally defined by Haller in the 18th Century, its name being adapted from the root of Orchis, a well-known genus in the temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere. It belongs to the group of plants known as monocotyledons, which have seeds generating in a single lobe, and with few exceptions, parallel-veined leaves. The Orchidaceae family is a very large one, represented in the world by over 400 genera and many thousands of species, especially abundant in the Tropics, and rare in the Arctic regions.
West Australian orchids, which are practically all terrestrial, cannot be compared to some found in Brazil, the Malay States, India, and other tropical places, for size, vividness of color, and bizarre marking. But their delicate tints, dainty fragility of form, the curious structure of many of the species, and their methods of fertilization, constitute beauty that endears them to young and old, and characteristics that fascinate the botanist.
A tropical South American orchid (Coryanthes, Hooker, four species) has the honor of being considered the most wonderful flower in the world, It is an epiphyte (which means that it grows attached to the trunk or branches of a tree without being parasitical, or on a rock-face, but never in the ground) and has pendulous flowers marvelously constructed for the purpose of ensuring fertilization by insects. Below a part composed of succulent tissue very attractive to bees, is a bucket-like organ kept full of a thin watery fluid that drips into it. The bees fight for places to secure the succulent tissue, and every now and then one falls, or gets pushed off, into the bucket. It can neither fly nor climb out and is forced to squeeze through a sort of narrow' overflow pipe. In so doing it passes the stigma, fertilizing it, if any pollen is borne, and then, passing the anther, is loaded with a fresh supp1y of pollen to be carried to other flowers.
The order or family Orchidaceae was originally defined by Haller in the 18th Century, its name being adapted from the root of Orchis, a well-known genus in the temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere. It belongs to the group of plants known as monocotyledons, which have seeds generating in a single lobe, and with few exceptions, parallel-veined leaves. The Orchidaceae family is a very large one, represented in the world by over 400 genera and many thousands of species, especially abundant in the Tropics, and rare in the Arctic regions.
West Australian orchids, which are practically all terrestrial, cannot be compared to some found in Brazil, the Malay States, India, and other tropical places, for size, vividness of color, and bizarre marking. But their delicate tints, dainty fragility of form, the curious structure of many of the species, and their methods of fertilization, constitute beauty that endears them to young and old, and characteristics that fascinate the botanist.
A tropical South American orchid (Coryanthes, Hooker, four species) has the honor of being considered the most wonderful flower in the world, It is an epiphyte (which means that it grows attached to the trunk or branches of a tree without being parasitical, or on a rock-face, but never in the ground) and has pendulous flowers marvelously constructed for the purpose of ensuring fertilization by insects. Below a part composed of succulent tissue very attractive to bees, is a bucket-like organ kept full of a thin watery fluid that drips into it. The bees fight for places to secure the succulent tissue, and every now and then one falls, or gets pushed off, into the bucket. It can neither fly nor climb out and is forced to squeeze through a sort of narrow' overflow pipe. In so doing it passes the stigma, fertilizing it, if any pollen is borne, and then, passing the anther, is loaded with a fresh supp1y of pollen to be carried to other flowers.
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