Orchid

About the Orchid

The largest family of flowering plants with over 28,000 species. Vanilla comes from an orchid species (Vanilla planifolia). Orchid seeds are the smallest in the plant kingdom - a single pod contains millions of dust-like seeds. They can live for 100 years. Some orchids mimic female wasps to trick male wasps into pollination. They were once so valuable that orchid hunters risked death collecting them from remote jungles. They have bilateral symmetry - only one line divides them into matching halves. Each flower is adapted to a specific pollinator.