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
Species Plantarum of the thousands of plant species known to Linnaeus at the time. In the first edition, there were 5,940 names, from "Acalypha australis" to "Zygophyllum spinosum". In his introduction, Linnaeus estimated that there were fewer than 10,000 plant species in existence; there are now thought to be around 400,000 species of flowering plants alone. The species were arranged in around a thousand genera, which were grouped into 24 classes, according to Linnaeus' sexual system of classification. There are no descriptions of the genera in '; these are supplied in the companion volume ' ("the genera of plants"), the fifth edition