Orchidaceae — Earth’s Most Beautiful Orchids

Dracula simia -- dracula orchid

Dracula simia — dracula orchid

Dracula simia, called also the dracula orchid, is an epiphytic orchid originally described in the genus Masdevallia, but later moved to the genus Dracula.

The arrangement of column, petals and lip strongly resembles a monkey’s face. The plant blooms at any season with several flowers on the inflorescence that open successively. Flowers are fragrant with the scent of a ripe orange.

The Orchidaceae are a diverse and widespread family of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colorful and fragrant, commonly known as the orchid family.

Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering plants. The Orchidaceae have about 28,000 currently accepted species, distributed in about 763 genera.

The determination of which family is larger is still under debate, because verified data on the members of such enormous families are continually in flux. Regardless, the number of orchid species is nearly equal to the number of bony fishes, more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species.

The family encompasses about 6–11% of all seed plants.

The largest genera are Bulbophyllum (2,000 species), Epidendrum (1,500 species), Dendrobium (1,400 species) and Pleurothallis (1,000 species). It also includes Vanilla (the genus of the vanilla plant), the type genus Orchis, and many commonly cultivated plants such as Phalaenopsis and Cattleya.

Moreover, since the introduction of tropical species into cultivation in the 19th century, horticulturists have produced more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars.