Orchid

Morphological Character       

Orchid is a Perennial herbage flower. It has corpulent fleshy roots, with no root fair but symbiotic bacterium. It has faked bulb, generally called Lutou, covered with sheath, co-existing with other faked bulbs in a line. The leaf is linear or sword-shaped, leathery, and erect or saggy. The flower grows by itself or constitutes a raceme, with multiple bracts on the pedicel. The flower is bisexual and balmy. The corolla consists of three sepals, three petals and pistil column. The center sepal is called primary sepal, the other two are called accessory sepals. The expanding of accessory sepals is called Petal Hu. The two thick fleshy petals at the top are erect, with the front-end crimp inward; it is also called Petal Peng (holding). The one at the bottom is a large labellum, called Lansun, turning brown when mature. The seed is small and farinose.

According to its shapes of the primary sepal, accessory sepals, Petal Peng and labellum, Orchid and orchis are divided into several varieties, including petal plum, petal narcissus, petal lotus, petal butterfly, odd genus and pure mind, respectively. Petal plum has short and circular sepals, thick flesh, a little bending inward, narrow base, corpulent fleshy Petal Peng, inwardly crimped front-end like a bag, short and hard labellum, and flower faces upward at the beginning of blossom. Famous species of Petal plum include Plum Song and Plum Xishen.

Petal narcissus has longer sepals than Petal plum, with a gradually sharp front-end, thick Petal Peng, bag-shaped front-end, and saggy and backward wrapped labellum. Famous species of Petal narcissus comprise Wangzi and Cui Yipin.

Petal lotus has wide, thick and narrow-base sepals with wide front-end and peaky tuberculum. Petal Peng is not like a bag, and labellum is moist and turns back a little. Famous species of Petal plum comprise Da Fugui and Cui Gaihua.

The insides of the two downward sepals of Petal butterfly turn thick, and form undulant crapes, with red spots on it. Sometimes, the number of sepals or petals proliferates (For example, the number of corolla of Lvyun is about 8), or the shapes of flowers vary distinguishingly.

The floral perianths, stalks and bracts of the pure mind have the same color, pure green, olive green and so on, without mottled green, olive green or stripes. The rare species include Zhanghe Su and Laowentuan Su.

Orchid likes shade, wetness, ventilated environment and humus-rich fertile arenaceous soil, with good drainage and weak acidity. It should avoid direct sunshine and dryness