Botanists found a unique night-flowering orchid near Papua New Guinea

Botanists found a unique night-flowering orchid near Papua New Guinea

Botanists have discovered a unique orchid that only flowers at night and closes after sunrise near Papua New Guinea. The orchid, Bulbophyllum nocturnum, is the only among 25,000 species,
which flowers for only one night, is the world’s first known orchid that unfurls its petals at night and loses its flowers by day.

A team of botanists collected it on a field trip to New Britain, an island in the Bismarck archipelago. The description of the plant published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society
states that the flowers of Bulbophyllum nocturnum species are thought to be pollinated by midges and can last for one night only.

Dutch orchid specialist, Ed de Vogel, discovered an unusual flowering after he took some of the plants from trees in a logging area on the island. He brought the orchids at the Hortus
Botanicus in Leiden to cultivate them, as most orchids are epiphytes, plants that grow upon other plants like trees.

Because the orchid was a member of the Epicrianthes group of orchids, de Vogal was particularly keen to see the orchid’s flowers. Epicrianthes group has several species that have weird
flowers with strange attachments, which mostly resemble leggy insects, small hairy spiders or intricate sea-creatures.

Ed de Vogel noticed, after cultivating the orchids, that the flower buds appear but they simply shrivelled up and died instead of opening to reveal their petals. He took one of the plants
home for further study and finally found out that the flowers open around 10pm one night and close again soon after sunrise.

A small number of plant species, such as the queen of the night cactus, have the night-flowering orchids. Bulbophyllum nocturnum is the only orchid among 25,000 species that is known to
flower at night.

This orchid has yellow-green sepals that unfurl to reveal tiny petals adorned with dangling, greyish, thick and thin appendages. The flower width is 2cm and has no noticeable smell.

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Nov 25 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry