Sunday, December 27, 2009

Upside-down orchid....or is it ?


A common orchid from Malaysia, Borneo, PNG, Thailand and some say Singapore.

Most orchid flowers are oriented differently, having a lip at the lowest part of the flower which serves as a landing pad for the pollinator (see for example a Cirrhopetalum) . So when someone told me flowers of Bulbophyllum macranthum are upside-down, with lips situated at the top (oscillating through a notch between the two sepals), I could not but agree. But as I later learned, a standard orchid flower is resupinate - which means that the flowers twist 180 degree about the flower stalk during growth so in effect, most orchid flowers are upside-down.

Which also means, a non-resupinate orchid flower like this, is, as a matter of fact, right-side up.

Seems rather trivial, but it means that they have a rather different pollinating mechanism....