"J Fortuna" wrote in message ...
I think I read somewhere that orchids
are mainly or only identifiable as orchids because of the flowers, and so I
am thinking that there could be a plant species out there that would be an
orchid if only it did flower but it never does.

I'm reading what everybody is writing here and trying to absorb it.

I did just want to add something to J Fortuna's sentence above. It's
kind of an aside...

For the masses of us, orchids are 'mainly' identified by specific
flower parts that other flowering plants don't have, i.e. the column
and by the arrangement of petals and sepals and that odd
petal-turned-lip-or-pouch thingy. However, the seed is very different
and probably unique to the family and so is the recently germinated
baby plant; before the embyro develops leaves, roots or stems, it
makes something called a protocorm, (which may be stem tissue for all
I know). If you gave me a sufficiently large bit of pollen from a
plant I would probably be able to tell if it came from an orchid.
It's that unique. Pollen from the slipper group would probably prove
my undoing. Maybe.

I want to understand this stuff, but it is way beyond me. Only the
most general concepts just beyond red and white pea plants are firmly
fixed...