Introduction

Orchidaceae are the largest family of flowering plants (monocotyledon). The most visibly obvious manifestation of the diversity of orchids is their floral complexity: orchids uniquely fuse their gynoecia and androecia, and one of the three petals is modified into a landing platform or attracting structure, the lip or labellum. It has long been assumed that in orchids the basic controls on floral morphology that operate in other monocots must have been modified.

For many years there was a great deal of controversy over their phylogenetic relationships and higher-level classification. This uncertainty about relationships was highly inhibitory to development of research projects in other areas of orchid biology because it was difficult to frame evolutionary hypotheses when researchers were not certain of which taxa were relevant to include.

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