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cheaper health care products and new plant-based therapeutic markets in preference to more

expensive target-specific drugs and biopharmaceuticals
Orchids have been described as the “Royal Family” of plants by those captivated by their

exquisite flowers of myriad shapes, sizes, and colours. The Chinese were the first to cultivate
and describe orchids for medicinal use. Confucius (551-479 BC), the Chinese philosopher

called the orchid (lan in Chinese) the “King of Fragrant Plants”. The Greeks referred to
testicles as orchis,and Theophrastus (370-287 BC) named the orchids from that word, as the

underground tubers of many European terrestrial orchids resemble a pair of testicles.He made

mention about the medicinal properties of orchids in his book “Enquiry into
Plants”.Dioscorides (0040-0090 AD),a Greek botanist, physician and pharmacologist

mentioned orchids in his work “De Materia Medica”.He adopted and promoted the popular

theory “The Doctrine of Signatures” and commented on the usefulness of orchids as a
determinant of the sex of the offspring .He believed that ingestion of dried tubers by woman

give female progeny while the ingestion of fresh tubers by man would produce male
offspring(Bulpitt,2005). The first reference to orchids in the western hemisphere appears in

1532 in the “The Badianus MS” an Aztec herbal. The first record of orchids in cultivation
dates back to 1731 in England. Records of Kew Botanical Gardens show that Epidendrum

cochleatum flowered for the first time in cultivation in 1787.In India the earliest mention of

Orchids is found in Charaka Samhita (A.D.100), which describes the medicinal properties of
‘Vanda’.

Their numerical strength in terms of species has been variously estimated [(17,000-35,000;
Dressler, 1993), (19,128 sp.; Atwood, 1986), (18,000sp.750 genera; Heywood, 1993),

(19,500 sp. 775 genera; Judd et al., 1999), (20,000sp. Lawler & Rao, 2002)].The orchids are
cosmopolitan in distribution except in Antarctica. Ground habit is basic in these plants but

their major speciation has revolved around the epiphytic mode. Their habit is diverse varying

from terrestrial to epiphytic and lithophytes to subterranean. They are myco-heterotrophic or
autotrophic but they are never parasitic. The orchids are inherently slow growers, have

fascinating floral morphology, and highly advanced reproductive biology.

Besides contributing tremendously to the growth and development of international trade in
floriculture, the orchids are also therapeutically significant. The ancient literature is replete

with their utility in traditional drug formulations (cf. Lawler, 1984). Many of them continue
to be used to cure a variety of ailments including those related to nervous (Cymbidium

elegans, Cypripedium pubescens, Epipactis latifolia), rheumatic (Acampe papillosa, A.
praemorsa, Rhynchostylis retusa, Vanda testacea), dermal (Dendrobium alpestre, Eulophia

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