It Is One Thing To Be Called,

the worlds most beautiful.

it is another thing to be called the worlds most ugly, photograph © Rick Burian/Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, but that is the fate of this orchid, but first, the orchid family is a Monocot family of 28000 species and 763 genera, the number of orchid species is nearly equal to the number of bony fishes, more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species, so to be called the worlds ugliest orchid takes a bit of doing, but Gastrodia agnicellus has won that distinction hands down, one of this year’s newly discovered plants and fungi, has no leaves, grows from a woolly tuberous stem, has a bland brownish colour, and spends most of its life underground, emerging only to flower or produce fruit. “It’s not very attractive, I must say, it’s fleshy looking, red inside and brown on the outside,” Johan Hermans, one of the orchid researchers behind the flower’s discovery, told CNN. “This orchid’s got an amazing life cycle, it’s got an on-the-ground woolly tuber, no leaves, and the flower slightly pops up underneath the leaf litter. It opens only a little bit, it gets fertilized and the seed sort of fruits and actually lifts itself on quite a long stork about 20 centimetres (7.9 inches) tall, then it opens and distributes the seed.” I am guessing it will not be in a garden centre near you anytime soon!