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Morphology

Ontogeny of Orchid Flowers

  • Chapter
Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives, VIII

Abstract

Orchidaceae* is one of the largest flowering plant families, including 17,000 to 25,000 species (Garay, 1960; Dressler, 1981, 1993; Atwood, 1986). Associated with this enormous size is an extraordinary floral diversity. The complicated orchid flowers and their unusual pollination systems have fascinated botanists and plant lovers ever since the discovery of orchids.

The floral and particularly gynostemium development often Chinese representatives of subtribe Orchidinae (in the genera Hemipilia, Amitostigma, Neottianthe, Gymnadenia, Platanthera and Orchis) was recently described in great detail and illustrated by SEM-micrographs by Luo, Y-B. & Chen, S.-C. in Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 134: 529–548 (2000). The study revealed that the early gynostemium ontogeny is identical to that of the related species of tribe Orchidinae listed in the present review.

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Authors
  1. Hubert Kurzweil
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  2. Alexander Kocyan
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, Institute of Zoology and Botany, Agricultural University, Estonia

    Tiiu Kull

  2. Department of Developmental and Cell Biology, University of California, Irvine, USA

    Joseph Arditti

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Kurzweil, H., Kocyan, A. (2002). Morphology. In: Kull, T., Arditti, J. (eds) Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives, VIII. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2500-2_2

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