http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/sc...053223336&ei=1

An Orchid by Any Other Name: An Asparagus?
By CAROL KAESUK YOON


Orchids can be elegant, gaudy, lurid and even downright bizarre. But
while the unusual flowers of these species have excited plant lovers
for centuries, they have also made it difficult for evolutionary
biologists to place them in the plant family tree and identify their
closest relatives.

But now, scientists say, studies of the DNA of orchids are revealing a
host of surprises, chief among them, that orchids are actually part of
the asparagus group, closer kin to these vegetables than to the other,
flashier, flowering plants they had been placed with before.

deg