Orchids are dizzying in their diversity. Over the past 80 million years, some 25,000 wild species have taken root on six continents, in nearly every kind of habitat. Representing a full fourth of the world's flowering plants, there are four times as many orchid species as mammals, and twice as many as birds.

First row, left to right: Bulbophyllum mastersianum; Pheladenia deformis; Masdevallia coccinea; Trigonidium egertonianum; Regalia (Masdevallia) princeps; Caladenia (Leptoceras) menziesii

Second row, left to right: orchids Crocker Range Collection; Pterostylis sp.; Gongora quinquenervis, Anti-pollinator: a crab spider is lurking on a flower of Gongora, hoping to catch a bee or other insect; Bulbophyllum blumei; Lepanthes antilocapra; Lockhartia amoena

Third row, left to right: studio portrait of a crab spider orchid; Aspasia epidendroides; Chiloglottis sp. a sexually deceptive species.; Pterostylis sp.; orchids tenom agricultural centre; Calanthe pulchra

Photos: Giant Ocean-Trash Vortex Documented—A First

Take a look at pieces of the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, a loose, free-floating "dump" twice the size of Texas.