Volunteer Park Conservatory cycads, and orchids, visitors will find banana ("Musa"), Bird of Paradise ("Strelitzia"), "Anthurium" and ginger (Zingiberaceae) in this house. The conservatory’s orchid collection, which began as a gift from Mrs. Anna H. Clise in 1921, is also found in the Palm House. Orchids are a large and diverse flowering plant family composed of more than 20,000 species. The conservatory’s collection includes representatives of the largest genera – "Bulbophyllum", "Epidendrum", and "Dendrobium" – as well as commonly cultivated genera such as "Cattleya" and "Phalaenopsis". Transporting endangered orchids is prohibited by the Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) and many
Flowering plant of the idea's strongest proponents is Robert T. Bakker. He proposes that herbivorous dinosaurs, with their eating habits, provided a selective pressure on plants, for which adaptations either succeeded in deterring or coping with predation by herbivores. In August 2017, scientists presented a detailed description and 3D model image of what the first flower possibly looked like, and presented the hypothesis that it may have lived about 140 million years ago. A Bayesian analysis of 52 angiosperm taxa suggested that the crown group of angiosperms evolved between and . The number of species of flowering plants is estimated to be