Orchids from Another Planet

If we ever found flowers on another planet, could they possibly be stranger than these earthly orchids? Some of these blooms look like visitors from Mars or Neptune.

Despite their alien facades, they’re simply members of the enormous orchid family, which has diversity beyond measure. Their long Latin names, like Masdevallia caudivolvula __and Sigmatostalix posadarum, are sometimes bigger than the blooms themselves. They may resemble birds in flight or deep sea creatures, but they don’t look much like flowers.

In choosing photos for this post, out of many years of our orchid show pictures, the Bulbophyllums truly stood out. This large, diverse group of orchids has lots of weird blooms. The last row of photos below shows three Bulbophyllum examples, but there were many more. Don’t these flowers look like they could have come from another planet?

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