Orchids, more precisely, orchid flowers are fun. Who can argue? First a couple of caveats. Most orchids have pretty small flowers; only a few have big, really gaudy flowers, and people are more familiar with these for the obvious reason that they are the ones most commonly cultivated and pinned on prom dresses. Second, a lot of cultivated orchids are hybrids, artificial things, and therefore no matter how fantastic looking the flower, it's a flower that only exists as a curiosity; it doesn't function in nature. What could be duller to a floral biologist? People's fascination with the unnatural contrivances has always puzzled the Phactor because real species have some truly fantastic floral forms, and these are shaped by natural selection to be functional, to interact with their pollinator is sometimes a very specific manner. This is one of the reasons why making hybrids is so unchallenging; pollinator specificity and pollinator behaviors are the isolating mechanisms that keep even closely related species from swapping genes, so without other isolating mechanisms it's easy for humans to hand pollinate them and generate hybrids sometimes with fantastic floral forms, but forms not adapted to do anything. The photography displayed here is enough to make you envious, but you don't expect less form National Geographic. (Prosthechea fragrans is shown here.) 