Family Orchidaceae, the Orchid Family

Name: Orchidaceae

Meaning of Name:
Orchidaceae, from Amcient Greel ὄρχις (órkhis, ‘testicle’, a reference to the shape of the twin tubers of some Orchis species) + Latin -āceae (the feminine plural of -āceus,‘resembling’, a suffix used to form the taxonomic family names of plants, algae, bacteria, and fungi)

Common Names:
The orchid family

Botanical Information:
Orchidaceae contains about 700 genera and 28,000 species spanning many climates and all continents except Antarctica. Many are epiphytes (living in trees), but others are lithophytes (living on rocks) or terrestrial (in-ground).

Orchids are immensely popular for their showy flowers, with many societies and clubs worldwide catering to their fanciers and collectors.

One botanical characteristic of Orchidaceae is the bilateral symmetry of their flowers, as opposed to the more common radial symmetry of the majority of flowers. Radial symmetry is where there is no right or left, and where one section of the object when rotated about a central point would map to another section of same size.

Objects with bilateral symmetry however, do have a distinct right and left which are mirror images of each other, and the photo chosen to illustrate this family shows this clearly in the flowers of a Cymbidium infloresccence.

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