The Orchid Family

The orchids are members of a distinct family known as Orchidaceae that has been derived from lily-like plants.

Orchidales are so much closely related to the Asperagales that sometimes it is merged with the latter. This order is characterised by the following shared primitive features: Zygomorphous, epigynous flowers, wet stigma, simultaneous microsporogenesis and endosperms arrested by an early stage or wholly inhibited.

Orchidales, as conceived by Dahlgren and Rasmussen, comprise three families, such as, Apostasiaceae, Cypripediaceae and Orchidaceae. In most published works, these families have been, however, united into one, that is Orchidaceae. Among these, the system of Dressler , revised by him in 1993, has been universally hailed as the most phylogenetic one for Orchidaceae. More recently, Szlachetko in his system of classification has tried to improve Dressler's system by avoiding cases of cladistic analysis that have often led to the formation of monothetic groups. For example, Dressler  has included two highly morphologically and anatomically different groups like Dendrobieae and Vandae under the Dendrobioid subclade basing only on the presence of stigmata or spherical cells. Szlachetko  justifies the maintenance of the three separate families, as above, based on the study of generative structure, which according to him, have developed differently. Apart from the difference in the gynostemium structure, the three families differ in the organization of the perianth as well.

Type: Orchis Linn.

Plants variable in habit; herb, vine or shrub-like, sympodials and monopodials; autotrophic or occasionally micotrophic i.e. saprophytic. Roots clustered or scattered along the stem or rhizome, with or without velamen. Storage organs of different forms. Leaves plicate, convolute, duplicate or terete, occasionally scale-like, cauline or basal, sessile or petiolate, articulated or not. Inflorescence terminal or axillary, forming a spike, raceme or panicle or capitate, single to many flowered. Flowers of various sizes and shapes, resupinate or not; the median tepal of the inner whorl transformed into a lip, usually different from the other tepals; lip sometimes similar in shape and size to the perianth. Ovary usually one-chambered, but occasionally three-chambered. Gynostemium often tied with the basal column, foot free or agglutinate with the ovary. Column part formed by the complete or partial fusion of the staminodes; filament and style usually well developed, but none in some groups; occasionally the style and stigma are borne at the end of the column. Stigma triple, double or single-lobed, often greatly modified, concave or convex, entire or split into three parts, wet. The median stigma lobed, modified into the rostellum, a structure of various shapes and sizes, producing a viscidium, usually single, but double in several genera, cellular, rarely semi-fluid. The viscidium sometimes produces a hook-like structure, the so-called hamulus. The tegula originates on the abaxial surface of the rostellum.

 The single anther, representing the median of the outer whorl, is fertile, erect, reflexed or incumbent, fixed or movable or detachable; connective thick, fleshy or wide, separating or covering both locules or two anthers representing the laterals of the inner whorl fertile; staminode shield-shaped or none or all the three anthers representing the inner whorl fertile . Pollinia usually compact or sectile, rarely granular, of monads or tetrads, often partially sterile forming caudicles of different shapes and structures; or pollen grains not forming pollinium, powdery or gathered in a sticky and paste-like mass. Staminodes, representing the lateral anthers of the inner whorl, rarely becoming free, finger or wing-like, usually connected in the column part, forming structures of various forms, sizes and functions. Fruit capsular, sometimes fleshy. Seeds tiny, adapted to anemochory, exceptionally to zoochory or hydrochory.

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