Orchids are more closely related to the _____ family?

Friar Tuck

I would have guessed at lillies but it could also be bananas according to http://www.cinnamonhearts.com/YesNoBana.htm Bananas come in some 400 varieties, all belonging to the same family as lillies and orchids.Bananas grow in almost all tropical countries, but are exported chiefly by Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala, nations long known as the Banana Republics. Oddly enough, bananas are also grown in Iceland, in soil heated by geysers! Source: The Great Food Almanac, A Feast Of Facts From A to Z, by Irene Chalmers, %A91994 by Irene Chalmers. Jun 06 03, 7:17 AM

student

thanks... Im' not sure If I messed up or what... maybe it was order instead of family? I read in the newyork times (I don't post the link because you have to register and pay for the entire article) that they are more closely related to asparagus. here it is: Orchids can be elegant, gaudy, lurid and even downright bizarre. But while the unusual flowers of these species have excited plant lovers for centuries, they have also made it difficult for evolutionary biologists to place them in the plant family tree and identify their closest relatives. But now, scientists say, studies of the DNA of orchids are revealing a host of surprises, chief among them, that orchids are actually part of the asparagus group, closer kin to these vegetables than to the other, flashier, flowering plants they had been placed with before. Jun 06 03, 2:24 PM