Phalaenopsis
The generic name means "Phalaen[a]-like" and is probably a reference to the genus Phalaena, the name given by Carl Linnaeus to a group of large moths; the flowers of some species supposedly resemble moths in flight.[2] 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, Palawan and Zamboanga del Norte in the island of Mindanao in thePhilippines and northern Australia. Orchid Island of Taiwanis named after this genus. Little recent information about their habitat and their ecology in nature is available since little field research has been done in the last decades.
Most are epiphytic shade plants; a few arelithophytes[citation needed]. In the wild, some species grow below the canopies of moist and humid lowland forests, protected against direct sunlight; others grow in seasonally dry or cool environments. The species have adapted individually to these three habitats.
They are native throughout southeast Asia from the Himalayan mountains to the islands of Polillo, Palawan and Zamboanga del Norte in the island of Mindanao in thePhilippines and northern Australia. Orchid Island of Taiwanis named after this genus. Little recent information about their habitat and their ecology in nature is available since little field research has been done in the last decades.
Most are epiphytic shade plants; a few arelithophytes[citation needed]. In the wild, some species grow below the canopies of moist and humid lowland forests, protected against direct sunlight; others grow in seasonally dry or cool environments. The species have adapted individually to these three habitats.
DESCRIPTION (FROM FLORA OF CHINA)
Herbs, terrestrial, lithophytic, and epiphytic, monopodial. Stems short, leafy, concealed by overlapping persistent leaf sheaths, rooting at base. Leaves persistent or sometimes deciduous, alternate, distichous, oblong to broadly elliptic, sometimes marbled or suffused with purple or silver, succulent. Inflorescences erect to laxly pendulous, axillary pedunculate racemes or panicles; peduncle terete; rachis terete or bilaterally compressed, rarely swollen relative to peduncle; floral bracts persistent, inconspicuous, succulent or papery. Flowers often fragrant, few to many, resupinate, produced simultaneously or in succession over time, often long-lasting, inconspicuous to showy, plain or variously spotted, marbled, or barred, membranous to thickly fleshy. Pedicel and ovary terete, slender, shallowly 6-sulcate. Sepals and petals free, spreading, subsimilar to dimorphic, lateral sepals usually oblique and larger than dorsal sepal. Lip 3-lobed, clawed, continuous with foot, sometimes saccate or subsaccate; lateral lobes erect and subparallel, often callose; mid-lobe oblong-elliptic to obtrullate, rarely transverse, apex sometimes with a pair of tendril-like appendages (cirri), sometimes pubescent to villous, callus uni-, bi-, or triseriate, longitudinal, rarely transverse; column stout, often subtended by a pair of fleshy kneelike protrusions, without wings, with a foot, usually dilated lateral to stigma. Pollinia 2 or 4, on a common spatulate stipe and viscidium. Capsule pedicellate
---FOC Vol. 25 Page 8, 14, 478 |
Species
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