by Rich Leighton | Feb 17, 2020 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
Certain species of orchids are parasitic. They are not able to produce food (sugar) using the sunlight and carbon dioxide (like other green plants with chlorophyll). Instead, they obtain food from fungi that live inside their roots. MORE PHOTOS OF NATIVE ORCHIDS MORE...
by Rich Leighton | Oct 28, 2019 | Florida, Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
Roughly 10 percent of all plant species are orchids, making them the largest plant family on Earth. MORE PHOTOS OF ORCHIDS MORE FLORIDA NATURE FACTS Florida Nature Facts is a series about interesting facts about the flora, fauna and places that make Florida so...
by Rich Leighton | Aug 4, 2019 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
Our native orchids have a symbiotic relationship with certain fungi called a mycorrhizal association. The fungus provides nutrients to the orchid plant, and the orchid is a home to the fungus. Orchid seeds are so tiny they do not have enough food to nourish a...
by Rich Leighton | Apr 4, 2019 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
To say that the number of wild native orchids found around the world is massive would be a massive understatement. Approximately 28,000 orchid species are found alive today which more or less equals the number of bony fish species found in the waters all over the...
by Rich Leighton | Mar 30, 2018 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Orchids
Probably the most famous of our southern native orchids, the rare, leafless and mysterious ghost orchid of South Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas is at home in the dark, humid swamps where it regularly skips a few to up to a dozen or more years between flowering. It is...
by Rich Leighton | Mar 12, 2017 | Florida, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Nature Photography, Orchids
Ten years ago I spotted my first wild ghost orchid in the Fakahatchee Strand of Southwest Florida after literally years of exhaustively searching the wetlands and wading through enormous tracts of swamp following a grid pattern on a worn-out, folded-up survey map....
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