At an earlier time along the 120 yards of our Route 202 frontage in northern NJ, we had a bed of flowering daffadils and irises - 360 ft by 4 ft. dimensionally. I knew our front yard was 120 yards wide because as children my brother and I measured it for a football field. Most of the flowers shared the same colors of th orchid below. And the appearance of the iris is remarkably similiar.
Darwin coming upon the iris and the orchid might believe each had been molded by similiar natural forces and were similiarly naturally selected. Not a chance here. For the radius greater than 1000 miles of our location we have nothing but a relatively few volcanic islands and lots of ocean....very little open soil, relatively speaking.
Most significantly the orchid does not send roots into the soil; the iris must. Orchid roots are used to secure the plant onto another structure where neutrients are gained through fresh water that is nearly continuously present with mist and rain.
Imagine ripping an iris bulb with it's root mass out of the ground, securing it upside down on a horizontal screen above ground in nearly full but filtered sun and watching it thrive without soil nutrients, but just rain. The orchid thrives under these circumstances, making it a flowering version of a rain forest Camel. It stores a volume of water in some of its leaves.
It typically blooms for an extended period once or twice annually. Some of these orchids are pollinated by bats.
I personally speculate here, now. Someone really intelligent created this plant where it could rain so hard that all soil and other plant life can be washed into the ocean, but any orchid gripping a lava outcropping would be absolutely comfortable with the conditions and propogate in spite of it.
