File talk:Leptotes.jpg

There is a typo: Column Dalton Holland Baptista 18:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. Always one. Chris Day 18:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, to be particularly exact, the place where the column arrow points is actually the anther cap and the column itself is the pink/green structure holds it. Oh well, does it matter? Dalton Holland Baptista 18:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I wondered about being more specific its hard to see the details and anther cap would be better for my sloppy placement. Even better would be a dissected column to label some of the more specific parts.

In the diagram you originally linked to, the ovaries appear to be very far below where the petals and sepals attached. Is that normal for orchids? For most flowers the ovaries are above the attachment point, or is there a lot of fusion at the base of the petal and sepals organs so it only appears that their attachment point is higher up? I have been looking at the various flower structure on the web and it is no wonder Darwin got attracted to study orchids. The variability is huge and wonderous. I'm still not sure exatly what is in the middle. Is the column the style, or a fusion of the stamens and carpels? I assume the latter since it seems to have anthers and stigma. Chris Day 18:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I can redo this diagram, at present I just threw it together so you could see what we might be able to do. Possibly you have more appropriate pictures? Chris Day 18:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

you guessed right Vanilla flowers have particularly long ovaries which become the very long fruits we know. Most of the orchids have short ones. I have about 20 thousand orchid photos, however so far I haven't taken photos to particularly show each structure of them. Most of my photos, when they focus on details, they try to show why a species is different from the closest one, so they show diferences existing at the wings or arms located on the column, or hairs on the anther cap that are diferent from the next species, different way pollinia can be, etc. Actually as there are so many diferent morphologies, I think we will have to make a set of diagrams, maybe one to each subfamilia. Next week I'll look for some photos that can show their structures or try to take some photos to help on this. Other thing that occurs to me now is that we are including this diagram on Leptotes article because it is the first we have on CZ, but the best place to it probably is much higher, on subfamilia or tribus level, as these structures repeat on and on at every closely related genus (and probably we are not going to do this everytime, a thousand genera). I suppose later the best to do is take a photo showing why Leptotes is different from Loefgrenianthus and let the general structure to be shown at Laeliinae, Epidendreae or Epidendroideae's page. Dalton Holland Baptista 20:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, i see this as a fesability example. Given you like the idea, and i certainly think this will help readers to understand the descriptions, a more systematic approach at a higher level might be the best way to go. 20,000 photos! In that case we should be able to get a great set together to representative of the whole family. Chris Day 20:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)