Tiger orchid
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Grammatophyllum speciosum , section of an inflorescence |
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| Grammatophyllum speciosum | ||||||||||||
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The Tiger orchid ( Grammatophyllum speciosum ) is a species of the genus Grammatophyllum within the family of orchid (Orchidaceae). According to the Guinness Book of Records , it is the largest species of orchid in the world, specimens can be several meters tall.
description
Vegetative characteristics
Grammatophyllum speciosum is a perennial herbaceous plant . Their fleshy shoot axes , developed as pseudobulbs , reach lengths of about 3 meters and a diameter of about 5 centimeters, are furrowed lengthways and turn yellow with age. At the base they have white-colored, stiffly protruding, strongly branched roots. The shoot axes remind some observers of those of sugar cane . Their internodes are about 4 inches long.
The numerous leaves are 50 to 60 centimeters long and about 3 centimeters wide, rarely a little above, not thickened, narrowed to the sharp point and bent down. The leaf sheaths are colored yellow.
Generative characteristics
The upright inflorescence reaches a length of up to 2 meters with numerous (about 40) flowers, which are far apart in the lower section and are densely packed towards the tip.
The hermaphrodite flowers are zygomorphic and threefold and reach a diameter of about 10 centimeters. The mostly three sepals and mostly three petals are similar to each other, the petals a little wider. They are quite far apart, without overlapping, and with a greenish-yellow basic color they have a dense orange-brown to brown pattern of spots. Its three-part lip is about 3 centimeters in length smaller than the sepals and petals and is reddish-haired on the light side with three keels, reddish-brown longitudinally striped, reaching approximately the middle of the central lobe. The side lobes are upright and bend over the stylus column . The stylus column is greenish, on the underside white with purple spots, it has an outgrowth on the base on both sides that encloses a cup-like cavity.
Your lower flowers of the inflorescence are smaller and differently designed. They only have two sepals and two petals each, the lip is completely missing, the stylus column is misshapen.
ecology
Grammatophyllum speciosum is a tropical epiphyte . The plant forms massive, dense, ball-like masses from the cylindrical pseudobulbs in the forks of tropical forest trees, forming huge clumps weighing more than a ton.
distribution
Grammatophyllum speciosum is widespread in rainforests of tropical East Asia. There are certain finds from Myanmar , Thailand , Laos , the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Borneo , Sumatra and Java . Finds from the Philippines , the Moluccas , Sulawesi , New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have not been confirmed and may relate to other species of the species complex. In 2016, Grammatophyllum speciosum was also detected in Vietnam for the first time. It is very rare in its entire range and threatens to become extinct in some regions in the wild. In Singapore there are plans to reintroduce the tiger orchid with material that has been propagated in botanical gardens.
Culture
Grammatophyllum speciosum was introduced to Europe early on because of its spectacular shape and attracted considerable attention at the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London's Hyde Park. However, it is only cultivated in warm houses by avid orchid lovers. The culture requires a minimum temperature of 15 ° C. Under these conditions, the plant only blooms every two to four years, at irregular times of the year.
Grammatophyllum speciosum is listed in Appendix II of the Washington Convention on the Protection of Species . Your commercial trade is thus possible with a clearance certificate from the exporting country ("CITES document"); export from your home country requires a permit.
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Systematics
The genus Grammatophyllum comprises six to twelve species, depending on the taxonomic view, all of which occur in tropical East Asia. The genus Grammatophyllum is closely related to the genera Cymbidium and Thecostele , which belong to the tribe Cymbidiae in the subfamily Epidendroideae within the family Orchidaceae . Grammatophyllum speciosum forms with the similar species Grammatophyllum wallisii ( endemic to the Philippines), Grammatophyllum kinabaluense (endemic to Borneo), Grammatophyllum pantherinum (Syn .: Grammatophyllum papuanum , of New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Malay Archipelago ) and Grammatophyllum cominsii , possibly synonymous with Grammatophyllum pantherinum ) the speciosum species group. The generic name Grammatophyllum is derived from the Greek words gramma for "painted sign, letter" and phyllon for "leaf", after the written drawing of the bracts.
Grammatophyllum speciosum was first described in 1825 by the German-Dutch botanist Carl Ludwig Blume in Bijdragen tot de flora van Nederlandsch Indië , 8, page 378 after herbarium records from the island of Java. Synonyms for Grammatophyllum speciosum flower are: Pattonia macrantha Wight , Grammatophyllum macranthum (Wight) Rchb. f. , Grammatophyllum fastuosum Lindl.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mark C. Young (Ed.): Guinness Book of World Records 1997 . Guinness Publishing Ltd. , ISBN 0-9652383-0-X , pp. 42 .
- ^ Gunnar Seidenfaden, Jeffrey J. Wood, Richard Eric Holttum: The Orchids of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore . Olsen & Olsen, Fredensborg 1992, ISBN 87-85215-24-4 , Grammatophyllum, p. 557-558 .
- ↑ Eng-Soon Teoh: Orchids of Asia . 3. Edition. Times Publishing Marshall Cavendish Ltd., Singapore 2005, ISBN 981-261-015-4 , p. 102 .
- ^ Nancy Laws: Orchid Breeding at Singapore Botanic Gardens. American Orchid Society, February 2009, archived from the original on December 25, 2010 ; accessed on February 8, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Tomohisa Yukawa, Akihiko Kinoshita, Nobuyuki Tanaka: Molecular Identification Resolves Taxonomic Confusion in Grammatophyllum speciosum Complex (Orchidaceae) . In: Bulletin of the National Museum of Nature and Science , Series B (Botany) . tape 39 , no. 3 , August 2013, ISSN 1881-9060 , p. 137-145 .
- ↑ Leonid V. Averyanov et al. : New Species of Orchids (Orchidaceae) in the Flora of Vietnam . In: Taiwania . tape 61 , no. 4 , 2016, p. 319‒354 , doi : 10.6165 / tai.2016.61.319 .
- ↑ Tim W. Yam et al. : Conservation and reintroduction of native orchids of Singapore - the next phase . In: European Journal of Environmental Sciences . tape 1 , no. 2 , December 2011, p. 38-47 , doi : 10.14712 / 23361964.2015.45 , JSTOR : 41760175 .
- ↑ a b c Grammatophyllum speciosum. In: Kew Science, Plants of the World online. Retrieved September 15, 2019 .
- ↑ Marcin Górniak, Ovidiu Paun, Mark W. Chase: Phylogenetic relationships within Orchidaceae based on a low-copy nuclear coding gene, Xdh: Congruence with organellar and nuclear ribosomal DNA results . In: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution . tape 56 , no. 2 , August 2010, p. 784–795 , doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2010.03.003 .
