Botanical Museum Leaflets 

 Fall 1986 



Vol. 30, No. 4 



OLIM VANILLACEAE 



Leslie A. Garay 



During the last 25 to 30 years much has been written about the 



systematics of the orchid fam 



mment 



mber 



those papers dealing with these subjects are exceptionally good 



maioritv of them 



fall rather short in their purported goals. Admittedly, during the 



mvself did find it almost 



times 



then prevailing trends and techniques in evolutionary biology, 

 such as cytology, cytogenetics, numerical and /or chemotaxon- 

 omy, scanning electron microscopy, not to mention the most 



promises of cladistics. While they all made 



m 



themselves 



nam 



com 



present contribution is no exception. In the following pages I 



merelv propose to share some 



during my studies of a small group of interrelated plants 

 together with pertinent data published about them by others 

 elsewhere. 



Oh those seeds! 



Already in 1960 I was much intrigued during my studies of the 

 evolution and systematics of orchids by the occurrence of certain 

 unique seed types in a few, totally unrelated genera. In these 



integument together form 



integument and most 



mbryo; moreover, the outermost 



223 



