Scotty Smith's Orchids of Colorado. - Southwest Colorado Wildflowers

What is a Wild, Native, Terrestrial Orchid?What is a Wild, Native, Terrestrial Orchid? This is easy. Wild: a plant that grows out of thegrasslands or mountains, without the help of mankind. Native: a plant that is endemic to the area.Not a transplant from another part of the country or a different country. Terrestrial: meaninggrowing on or from the ground--Earth. Orchid, what is an orchid? It must be that highly elusive anddifficult plant you see in greenhouses and its beauty unsurpassed. That plant that nobody can growat home. Yes and no. Orchids make up the largest of all plant families. With about 35,000 naturallyoccurring members to this family. This does not include the thousands of hybrids that have beendeveloped since humans became addicted to orchids. Now that is an extended nuclear family. Anorchid, like most flowering plants, has stamen(s) and a pistil. But in orchids these are fused togetherinto one. This called a column. The flower itself is made up of three petals and three sepals. One ofthe three petals is fashioned into what is called the lip. The lip acts as a platform, usually for a veryparticular pollinator. The pollinator could be a wasp, a bee, a butterfly, a spider, a bird, a moth, andso many more other insects. But each type of orchid is usually only pollinated by one pollinator.Each particular orchid has developed a relationship with its pollinator that when its pollinator diesout as a species so might the orchid.134