Orchidaceae — Earth’s Most Beautiful Orchids

Orchis simia -- monkey orchid

Orchis simia — monkey orchid

Orchis simia, commonly known as the monkey orchid, is a greyish pink to reddish species of the genus Orchis. It gets its common name from its lobed lip which mimics the general shape of a monkey’s body.

The range of the species is central and southern Europe, including southern England, the Mediterranean, Russia, Asia Minor, Caucasus, northern Iraq, Iran to Turkmenistan and northern Africa where it occurs in grassland, garrigue, scrub and open woodland, chiefly on limestone soils. It is absent from the Balearic Islands, Corsica and Sardinia.

On Cyprus the species can be categorized as threatened, and it became a protected species in the UK in 1975 under the Conservation of Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Act.

Orchis is a genus in the orchid family (Orchidaceae), occurring mainly in Europe and Northwest Africa, and ranging as far as Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang. The name is from the Ancient Greek orchis, meaning “testicle”, from the appearance of the paired subterranean tuberoids.

These terrestrial orchids have root tubers instead of pseudobulbs. They are extremely diverse in appearance. They produce an erect stem.

The inflorescence is a cylindrical to globular spike, 5–15 cm (2–6 in) long, with yellow, red to purple flowers. They start flowering at the base, slowly progressing upwards, except for the Monkey orchid (Orchis simia), which flowers in reverse order.

The original genus Orchis used to contain more than 1,300 names. Since it was polyphyletic, it has been divided  into several new genera: Ponerorchis, Schizodium, Steveniella.

They can be found in tropical Rainforest and semi-desert regions, near the seashore and in the tundra. The majority of neotropical orchid species can be found in southern Central America, northwest South America.

The Orchidaceae are a diverse and widespread family of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colourful 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.