Early Purple Orchid This picture of an Early Purple orchid is interesting because of the colour. This is one of the species that seems to have very little colour variation, like Butterfly orchids. On the other hand some species, most notably the Common Spotted has an enormous rage of shades from white through to deep magenta. In between these two you find species which have uncommon variation. One of these is the Pyramidal where in some sites they turn up in white. All this may seem like a simple observation, but there are implications for the curious mind. The Common Spotted gives the impression that colour is controlled by more than two genes. Snapdragons have a simple red/white system with pink in the middle, so there are broadly three shades, whereas Common spots have an almost continuous range between the two extremes. We would assume from that that there are at least three genes involved, maybe more. This sort of variation is simple compared with the colour and pattern variations that we find in Bee orchids.
The Common Spotted throws up another form of variation which is interesting because it may well be heavily modified by the environment. This, as if you had not guessed, is leaf spotting. We are at this time involved in a project to determine the interactions which create these lovely leaf patterns and whether they remain the same every year.
The Common Spotted throws up another form of variation which is interesting because it may well be heavily modified by the environment. This, as if you had not guessed, is leaf spotting. We are at this time involved in a project to determine the interactions which create these lovely leaf patterns and whether they remain the same every year.
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