The thousands of species and different orchids types make up an exceedingly varied family. Many orchids types are so different in appearance that it’s hard to believe they are related. Even given their amazing variety of sizes, shapes, and proportion of parts, orchids types do have a number of mutual characteristics that distinguish them from other plants. There are over 20,000 different orchid species, far more than any other plant species.

Orchids Types Identification

Before you begin to care of orchids it is very important to identify what orchids types you have, because different orchids types has different care, water and repotting techniques. The fact is that with a little bit of orchid types knowledge your orchid will not only thrive, but it will reward you over and over again with its glorious, long-lasting blooms.

So speaking about orchids types, first we should talk about orchid’s growth habits and they are nearly as varied as their flowers. Many orchids types grow on trees (it is called epiphytes) or rocks (lithophytes), surviving on rain and the nutrients brought them by decaying leaves and other organic detritus. None of orchids types is a parasite; orchids may live on a tree, but they take no nourishment from it. There is another orchids type, witch is called terrestrials and live in the soil and may have fibrous roots, rhizomes, or tubers. A few orchids types have no chlorophyll and live as saprophytes on decaying plant matter in the soil. Some familiar orchids types are opportunists, sometimes living in pockets of leaf mold on rocks or in the crotches of trees, sometimes flourishing on the ground in rich, highly organic soil.

Orchids Types by Growth

All orchids types belong to the Orchid Family, Orchidaceae and all Orchid plants increase their size in one or two ways. So, there is two main basic orchids types by growth:

1. Monopodial
2. Sympodial.

Orchids types with monopodial growth become taller each year as a consequence of new growth forming only at the tip of the stem. Leaves are set in two rows on opposite sides of the stem, each one alternating with its partner. Flower spikes and aerial roots originate in a leaf joint or opposite a leaf. The stems may become tall, as in many species of vanda, or may be so short as to be practically invisible, as in species of Phalaenopsis. Note that if these  orchids types top growth becomes damaged, they may still produce new growth from dormant buds lower on the stem.

The second orchids growth type, is sympodial. They possess a rhizome (a horizontal, usually underground stem of a plant), which sends out a shoot, which develops into a stem and leaves, and eventually produces flowers.

Here the upward growth of the plant stops, in most cases, after one season; the next year’s growth arises from the base of the prior year’s, extending the plant laterally (or vertically, if the plant is growing on a vertical surface). Sympodial orchids types may bloom from the tips of the most recent growth, from its base, or from buds on older growths.