When discussing the evolution of the orchid flower in 
Amer. Orchid Soc. Bull. 15: 18-19 (1946), Ames re- 
marked, with light-hearted scholarship, that ‘certain 
floral structures and the story of their probable evolution 
intensify the belief that orchids possess qualities which 
set them apart from other plants. Therefore (in the bosom 
of the family, with no botanists present) it is delightful to 
regard orchids as beings which have shaped their own des- 
tiny and to speak of their floral structures, of the rostel- 
lum, for example, as organs purposefully developed to 
serve special and fantastic functions’. Inthe 18th century, 
Linnaeus recognized most of their distinctive features asa 
group, although he knew only a few species. He thus pro- 
vided a base upon which, in the 19th century, other bota- 
nists, John Lindley their chief, built modern orchidology. 
The words orchis (6pxes) ‘testicle’ and logos (Aoyos) 
‘discourse’ are Greek, but the distinctive technical details 
of the family Orchidaceae if made known to a learned and 
intelligent Ancient Greek herbalist, even Dioscorides 
himself, in the Ist century A.D. would have had little 
or no meaning or interest. ‘To people whose interest in 
plants was primarily utilitarian, the division of the Plant 
Kingdom into major groups defined by inconspicuous and 
apparently trivial features such as these floral subtleties 
of organization—groups which Magnol called familae 
and Linnaeus ordines naturales—would have seemed 
pointless. The Ancient Greeks and Romans, like their 
successors in Kurope down to the 17th century, knew 
nothing about the functions of the different parts of the 
flower; they lacked lenses suitable for supplementing and 
training the naked eye in observation; consequently, 
they gave little attention to the floral structure on which 
the concept of the Orchidaceae rests. For them the word 
orchiologos would have suggested either a medical treatise 
or an obscene comedy. 
[ 67 | 
