The American Orchid Society (AOS) is moving to Coral Gables. For years, the AOS has had a home and orchid garden in Delray Beach, Florida. The Great Recession has dealt a blow to the society’s finances, so they need to sell their property and move. Fortunately, they’ve found a new home at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden just outside of Miami. “The missions of AOS and Fairchild Garden are perfectly aligned,” said Ron McHatton, the AOS’s chief operating officer. “With Fairchild’s international reputation, we have found a financially strong, solid strategic partner equally focused on horticulture, education and conservation.” The AOS will move its headquarters and its world-class orchid collection by March of next year. Many orchids will be displayed in a new conservatory opening at Fairchild in December 2012. Both groups will remain independent, and the AOS will continue to publish its monthly Orchids magazine.
Even if you don’t have a green thumb, you can have beautiful orchids all year with orchid wall calendars. The American Orchid Society’s 2012 calendar contains a year’s worth of mini orchids. The Orchid Conservation Alliance’s 2012 calendar (front cover pictured below) has photos and stories of a dozen of the world’s most endangered orchids. By adding these paper orchids to your collection, you’re supporting these essential conservation groups. Check their websites to purchase the calendars and other merchandise.
Orchid lovers around the globe are looking to Singapore this month for the 20th World Orchid Conference. From November 13-20, the planet’s top orchid pros, academics, and hobbyists will gather for exhibits, talks, and a show. This year’s conference theme is “Where New and Old World Orchids Meet.” For those of us who don’t have our plane tickets or reservations at Singapore’s remarkable new Marina Bay Sands, there are many more orchid shows around the globe to enjoy. And mark your calendars for the next World Orchid Conference in Johannesburg in 2014.
As Halloween quickly approaches, it’s the perfect time for a few creepy carnivorous plants. They’re helpful orchid allies, providing superb natural pest control, and they make great green alternatives to toxic pesticides. Bug-eaters come in many forms. Most famous are Venus Fly Traps, but there are also hundreds of varieties of pitcher plants, and many other lesser-known kinds. These predators share similar growing conditions to orchids, requiring high humidity and bright light. Some are native to tropical areas, while others grow in cold climates. Despite any scary stories you’ve heard, Little Shop of Horrors isn’t real — no plant can eat a human.
As bog plants, most need moist soil. Unlike orchids, carnivorous plants like to sit in trays of water. Only use rain water or purified water, since they cannot survive with tap water chemicals. Artificial fertilizer can kill them, too, so be careful not to splash when fertilizing orchids. However, compost is safe for them. Do not feed them meat like hamburger or poultry since they cannot digest it. All they need is pure water, a few bugs, and bright light. Remove old traps that brown and die. Some types go dormant over winter.
Besides Venus Flytraps and pitcher plants, there are many varieties of sundews, whose leaves have sparkly tentacles of deadly glue. Butterworts (a.k.a. Pinguiculas, or Pings for short) don’t appear lethal, but their broad leaves have tiny, sticky hairs, and act like flypaper.
Indoors in my orchid collection, I’ve made room for a small sundew and a Ping. They’ve been efficiently digesting little pests like gnats, aphids, and other inadvertent hitchhikers from the back garden. Our 2 pet cats love to hunt larger insects, so these small-insect eaters round out my pest control team. Creepy carnivorous plants are indispensable for many orchid growers like me.
To learn more and select the best carnivore companions for your orchids, check these resources:
Posted October 23rd, 2011 by Marc Cohen Categories:Orchid Names
Orchid name tags often use standard genus abbreviations. The genus name is the first word of a plant’s name, such as “Vanda” in the name Vanda coerulea, or “Phalaenopsis” in the name Phalaenopsis New Stripes. Here’s a list of abbreviations for some of the most common orchid varieties:
Flying bird? Incredible insect? Angel from above? The wonderful flowers of this Cochleanthes have a power to captivate. Its large white and purple blooms can be 4 inches (10 cm) tall.
This species is native to a vast area of the Amazon Rainforest, across Brazil, Suriname, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The flowers may look delicate, but they’re thick and waxy, and can hold up for months. This type typically blooms in fall and winter.
Thin leaves without pseudobulbs mean this orchid has little capability to store water. It needs daily watering and high humidity. Mine grows in shady conditions, and receives only a little morning sun. The name is easier to figure out than the captivating flower shape; to pronounce Cochleanthes, say “coke-lee-ANN-these.”
Miniature orchids have all the beauty of their larger cousins, but only take a fraction of the space. These tiny treasures enable orchid lovers to assemble a tropical collection in a single room, on a windowsill, or under lights. Mini forms exist in the Phal, Catt, Cymbidium, Dendrobium, Masdevallia, and Oncidium families, to name a few. The half dozen varieties pictured here are just a drop in the bucket of what’s available.
There’s no formal height rule, but generally mini orchids are plants sized half an inch (1 cm) to half a foot (15 cm.) Some types have taller flower stems, but they’re still considered minis. Many of these compact plants have relatively large blooms, especially compared to their small leaves. There are also varieties with tiny flowers which can be tough to appreciate without a good camera or magnifying lens, like this Lepanthopsis. When growing minis, it’s extra important to water thoroughly and maintain high humidity, since they can quickly dry out on hot or windy days.
Whether you grow minis or not, you can enjoy great books about them. Miniature Orchids details hundreds of petite hybrids and species. Author Steven Frowine includes useful care info, beautiful pictures, and helpful lists of minis by light requirements, ease of culture, fragrance, and more.
Miniature Orchids and How to Grow Them is a classic book by famed orchid author Rebecca Tyson Northen. As a biologist, she was one of the first to simply explain orchid care for amateurs when orchids became mass-marketed plants in the 1960’s and 1970’s. She wrote several care books, and this one helped to popularize these tiny orchid treasures.
As temperatures cool in autumn, the orchid that sat there doing nothing for months may surprise you with a burst of new growth. Relieved of oppressive summer heat, many varieties take this opportunity to grow or bloom. The change of season also requires changes in your orchid care regimen, so here are a few autumn reminders:
Bring warm growers indoors before temps fall too much. Take the opportunity to remove any leaf or flower debris. Check for pests, paying attention to leaf undersides and the potting media. A little prevention now can save a lot of headaches later, so I always spray with insecticidal soap before bringing orchids inside.
From San Diego to Washington DC, Montreal to Honolulu, Lima to Wellington, and all over Australia, October provides plenty of shows on 6 continents to satisfy orchid lovers. Each show offers incredible blooms, local experts, and vendors to help you find that perfect plant for your collection.
October 1
Jamaica Orchid Society Judging, Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions Building, Hope Blvd., Hope Pastures, Kingston, Jamaica
