Pet plants, Miltoniopsis.
Plants make good pets, and Orchids are a favourite. They will pack a sad and drop their flowers if you don’t look after them.
This Miltoniopsis plant survived falling out of its tiny pot, blown over in strong winds. After exposure to bright sunlight for a week, its leaves turned an unhealthy shade of green. Finally, I repotted it after accidentally knocking the healthiest bud off its short stem.
It survived.
The Bud
After accidentally knocking this bud off, I thought I’d look inside.
Beautifully packaged.
Petals are efficiently packed and ready to unfold when given the signal.
A Closer Look.
The male and female reproductive parts in orchids fuse into a single structure with a hood-like cover; "The Column."
Flowers commonly disperse pollen grains from their anthers. Designed to split open, they spill pollen grains all over the show.
The yellow yolk-like structure in view is a pollinium, one of two linked together. Each pollinium is a mass of pollen grains glued together in a single package. Foraging insects fly off with an intact pollinium glued to their undercarriage, ready to love-bomb the next orchid in their flight path.
