ORCHID, THE MOST WONDERFUL FLOWER IN POLYNESIA

Today, The Stones and The Grandma are still confined at their hotel. They are spending their free time enjoying their private beach and all the hotel facilities. They have received wonderful news from Europe. MJ is preparing their admissions to their Cambridge A2 Exams. They are happy and excited.

The Grandma has explained some concepts about The Superlative and she has remembered an old story about Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale, two of her favourite actors, and their relationship with orchids and Polynesian Islands while the family has been discussing about Kailani and Iván Stone relationship.

More information: The Superlative

The Orchidaceae are a diverse and widespread family of flowering plants, with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant, commonly known as the orchid family.

Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering plants. The Orchidaceae have about 28,000 currently accepted species, distributed in about 763 genera. The determination of which family is larger is still under debate, because verified data on the members of such enormous families are continually in flux.

Regardless, 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.

The family encompasses about 6–11% of all seed plants. The largest genera are Bulbophyllum (2,000 species), Epidendrum (1,500 species), Dendrobium (1,400 species) and Pleurothallis (1,000 species).

It also includes Vanilla, the genus of the vanilla plant, the type genus Orchis, and many commonly cultivated plants such as Phalaenopsis and Cattleya. Moreover, since the introduction of tropical species into cultivation in the 19th century, horticulturists have produced more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars.

Orchids are easily distinguished from other plants, as they share some very evident derived characteristics or synapomorphies. Among these are: bilateral symmetry of the flower (zygomorphism), many resupinate flowers, a nearly always highly modified petal (labellum), fused stamens and carpels, and extremely small seeds.

More information: Raymond Burr. Perry Mason, Ironside & Orchids

A study in the scientific journal Nature has hypothesised that the origin of orchids goes back much longer than originally expected. An extinct species of stingless bee, Proplebeia dominicana, was found trapped in Miocene amber from about 15-20 million years ago. The bee was carrying pollen of a previously unknown orchid taxon, Meliorchis caribea, on its wings. This find is the first evidence of fossilised orchids to date and shows insects were active pollinators of orchids then.

This extinct orchid, M. caribea, has been placed within the extant tribe Cranichideae, subtribe Goodyerinae, subfamily Orchidoideae. An even older orchid species, Succinanthera baltica, was described from the Eocene Baltic amber.

Genetic sequencing indicates orchids may have arisen earlier, 76 to 84 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous.

The overall biogeography and phylogenetic patterns of Orchidaceae show they are even older and may go back roughly 100 million years.

Using the molecular clock method, it was possible to determine the age of the major branches of the orchid family. This also confirmed that the subfamily Vanilloideae is a branch at the basal dichotomy of the monandrous orchids, and must have evolved very early in the evolution of the family.

Since this subfamily occurs worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions, from tropical America to tropical Asia, New Guinea and West Africa, and the continents began to split about 100 million years ago, significant biotic exchange must have occurred after this split, since the age of Vanilla is estimated at 60 to 70 million years.

Genome duplication occurred prior to the divergence of this taxon.

More information: Orchids

Love is an orchid which thrives
principally on hot air.

Myrtle Reed

THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT...

Today, The Stones and The Grandma continue confined in their Hawaiian hotel. They have been reading a new chapter of Oscar Wilde's The Ghost of Canterville and talking about Future Simple (Predictions) and Adverbs of Manner.

The family has welcome a new member, Kailani, an Iván Stone's friend who is going to stay with the family, at least during their staying in the Polynesian island, and the have been reading their horoscopes.

The future is the time after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist can be categorized as either permanent, meaning that it will exist forever, or temporary, meaning that it will end.

In the Occidental view, which uses a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the projected timeline that is anticipated to occur In special relativity, the future is considered absolute future, or the future light cone.

In the philosophy of time, presentism is the belief that only the present exists and the future and the past are unreal. Religions consider the future when they address issues such as karma, life after death, and eschatologies that study what the end of time and the end of the world will be. Religious figures such as prophets and diviners have claimed to see into the future.

A future study, or futurology, is the science, art, and practice of postulating possible futures. Modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures.

Predeterminism is the belief that the past, present, and future have been already decided.

More information: Future Simple

The concept of the future has been explored extensively in cultural production, including art movements and genres devoted entirely to its elucidation, such as the 20th-century movement futurism.

In physics, time is the fourth dimension. Physicists argue that space-time can be understood as a sort of stretchy fabric that bends due to forces such as gravity. In classical physics the future is just a half of the timeline, which is the same for all observers. In special relativity the flow of time is relative to the observer's frame of reference.

The faster an observer is traveling away from a reference object, the slower that object seems to move through time. Hence, the future is not an objective notion anymore. A more modern notion is absolute future, or the future light cone. While a person can move backward or forwards in the three spatial dimensions, many physicists argue you are only able to move forward in time.

In the philosophy of time, presentism is the belief that only the present exists, and the future and past are unreal. Past and future entities are construed as logical constructions or fictions. The opposite of presentism is eternalism, which is the belief that things in the past and things yet to come exist eternally.

Another view, not held by many philosophers, is sometimes called the growing block theory of time -which postulates that the past and present exist, but the future does not.

Religions consider the future when they address issues such as karma, life after death, and eschatologies that study what the end of time and the end of the world will be.

In religion, Major Prophets are said to have the power to change the future. Common religious figures have claimed to see into the future, such as Minor Prophets and diviners. The term afterlife refers to the continuation of existence of the soul, spirit or mind of a human or animal after physical death, typically in a spiritual or ghostlike after world.

Deceased persons are usually believed to go to a specific region or plane of existence in this after world, often depending on the rightness of their actions during life, like the Ghost of Canterville.

More information: Adverbs of Manner

  Prediction is very difficult,
especially if it's about the future.

Niels Bohr