- the plant family Orchidaceae, characterized by terrestrial or epiphytic herbaceous plants having simple, parallel-veined, usually alternate leaves, complex and often large and showy flowers pollinated primarily by insects, and fruit in the form of a capsule containing numerous minute seeds, and including calypso, fringed orchis, lady's-slipper, pogonia, rattlesnake plantain, vanilla, as well as numerous tropical orchids such as those of the genera Cattleya, Cymbidium, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, and Vanda.
