Apparently, there are around 8 billion different kinds of orchid. That, of course, doesn’t include hybrids. In my efforts to identify this flower, I tried all kinds of descriptions in my online search engine – ‘white orchid, purple spots,’ ‘epiphyte orchid, white with purple,’ ‘white and purple epiphyte.”

No matter what I tried I didn’t see anything that matched. I rifled through books at the library without success. Finally, I found a book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Orchids edited by Alec Pridgeon, that also failed to solve my problem. But the photos in the book did seem to indicate that this flower might be an oncidium orchid.

So I searched for ‘oncidium orchid, white with purple spots’ and voila, there it was. Of course, this being orchids, some photos were identified as ‘White Wonderland.’ Others referred to it as ‘Aliceara Winter Wonderland “White Fairy.”’ I plumped for ‘Degarmoara Winter Wonderland “White Fairy”’ because that appeared to be the more numerous choice. In the world of orchids, there seem to be varying opinions as to which plant fits in which species.

Now the only question is, how did this orchid come to be growing deep in the branches of a tangerine tree?