On cue for spring, orchid shows all over the world invite you to see amazing orchids, and meet local growers and vendors. This month, major shows are taking place in Taiwan, London, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Montreal, Chicago, Sao Paulo, and Sydney.
If you saw me at Pacific Orchid Expo 2010, it’s likely I looked like a kid in a candy store. Eyes wide, I’m at the mercy of the sights and scents as I jump from one orchid treat to the next. Fortunately, unlike candy, photos have no calories.
Whether it’s new hybrid colors on a Cymbidium or an Epidendrum, or a fascinating Dendrobium species, each one is its own special delight. This year’s ‘Carnaval’ theme also added to the show’s flavor, as seen with an eye-catching Mardi Gras mask made from Cymbidiums.
With remarkable individual orchids and breathtaking mass displays, it’s easy to become engrossed by tens of thousands of orchids at the show. So if I saw you there and didn’t say hello, sorry about that. I was just a kid lost in a candy store.
These 3 pictures from last year’s show should be enough to convince you to come to this year’s Pacific Orchid Expo. If you need more convincing, or just want to see more pictures, check out this link to a local news story about the show. Held at Fort Mason, the San Francisco Orchid Society’s annual event is the largest orchid show in the nation. This year’s theme is “Carnaval” celebrated with vibrant orchids. The show runs from Friday, Feb. 26 through Sunday, Feb. 28, with a special Gala Benefit on Friday night. There will be thousands of orchids on display, and thousands more for sale. Vendors come from all over California and the West, and even Hawaii and South America. See you there…
Besides orchids, few flowers inspire more superlatives than Heliconias. These blooms scream tropical. Sometimes called lobster-claws, wild plantains, or false birds-of-paradise, their bizarre flowers have wild colors and shapes.
These remarkable blooms are actually small flowers encased in large, colorful bracts. Some varieties have flower spikes that grow more than 8 feet (2.4 m) long. Heliconia flowers can hang down, stick up, or have a horizontal direction. Many have zig-zags and twisty-turns that seem to defy the imagination.
Heliconias are banana and ginger relatives, and it’s no surprise that they’re hummingbird favorites. They’re native to jungles of tropical America and some Pacific Islands. These photos show plants growing in a rainforest climate at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. In colder areas, some Heliconias can be grown outdoors as container plants, and moved indoors for winter.
If you’re ever in a tropical rainforest, and you’re wondering where the orchids are, look up! After all, most orchids are epiphytes, or air plants, which live in the forest canopy. In the wild, they attach to tree trunks and branches. Roots grow into cracks and crevices of the bark, but they don’t harm the trees. Often the orchids are high up and tough to see, but Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden has lots of spectacular specimens in view.
Orchids share the crowded trees with ferns, bromeliads, vines, mosses, lichens, insects, birds, lizards, and a miraculous variety of other living things. Even when out of bloom, it’s possible to spot orchids by looking for webs of white roots attached to trees or hanging in the air. Rain is usually plentiful, but constant high humidity keeps these roots from drying out if rains are scarce.
These exposed roots help demonstrate how orchids differ from other houseplants. You can clearly see why orchid roots need good air flow and water drainage. Regular potting soil is too dense. Loose mixtures of bark or moss simulate jungle conditions by allowing air and water to pass through. That’s how potted orchids allow us to enjoy some of the rainforest canopy without having to strain our necks.
Whether you had a nice valentine’s weekend or not, I’ll think you’ll enjoy this NPR story and remarkable video of a frustrated bee. The objects of the bee’s intentions are orchids that leave him brokenhearted with pollen stuck to his head. C’est l’amour, but it provides a great close-up of orchid pollination. Here’s a direct link to the same video in the story.
If you did have a better valentine’s weekend than that bee, maybe you received a gift orchid, and now you’re terrified that you’re going to kill it. Relax — it’s very likely that your gift is a tough hybrid, and with some basic orchid care info, it’s no harder to grow than other houseplants.
As cut flowers and live plants, orchids are more popular than ever for Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year. No matter whether you’re celebrating love, the Year of the Tiger, or both, here are some orchid buying tips:
“Buy a hybrid” is good advice when you’re buying a car, and also when you’re buying an orchid. Hybrids are great choices for Valentine’s gifts, especially for people new to orchids. They’re easier to grow and have showier flowers than most species. You can check out orchid buying basics in my previous posts here and here. Below are 3 great examples of the thousands of hybrid varieties available, including a Phal, a Cattleya, and a Wilsonara.
For over a century and a half, orchid lovers have been crossbreeding different orchid species. Many resulting hybrids bloom with larger, more colorful, and longer-lasting flowers than their parent species; often they can survive some degree of abuse or neglect. New hybrids constantly top these remarkable standards.
Most orchids sold are hybrids. If you’re buying at a supermarket or big box store, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re purchasing a hybrid. The same hybrid vigor that allows mass-produced orchids to be shipped across oceans and highways guarantees you a tough plant. Many florists and garden centers carry only hybrids, however you can ask which are hybrids and which are temperamental species. You’ll probably only encounter orchid species at some florists and online vendors like Andy’s Orchids, a species specialist. If you want to tackle the pickier needs of an orchid species, Andy’s is a great place to start. But unless your valentine is an experienced orchid grower, stick with hybrids. Remember that you should never take orchid species from the wild or buy wild orchids (it’s illegal, and the plants probably won’t survive the shock anyway.)
You can tell whether an orchid is a hybrid or a species by its name, but many orchids lack name-tags at all, and complicated hybrid names can be written incorrectly. If you’re ready to dive into understanding orchid names, take a deep breath and start here.
One more orchid buying tip: if it’s below freezing where you live, try not to expose unprotected orchids to the cold air. For some orchids, just a few seconds of freezing temps can kill the flowers or the plant. Cover the plant, heat your hybrid car, pull right up to the exit, and pack in your hybrid orchid.
Last year when I blogged about orchids on a volcano, it was about Akatsuka Orchids on Hawaii’s Big Island. This time, the orchids are growing right on the rim of a volcanic crater. Dave took some great photos of wild orchids while we hiked the Kilauea Iki trail in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The first set shows Arundinas, or Bamboo Orchids, growing in one of the volcano’s forests. Hardened black lava provides a dramatic backdrop.
Kilauea is an active volcano, but the last major lava action in this crater was 1959. Much of the rainforest on the rim has regrown in the past half century, and we saw numerous Phaius orchids on the forest floor (“Phaius” is pronounced FAY-us, and rhymes with “pay us.”) Like Bamboo Orchids, Phaius are terrestrials that grow in soil and in rock crevices.
Although neither species is native to Hawaii, both have naturalized in rainy parts of the islands. These orchids are thriving despite harsh growing conditions near the 4100 ft. (1250 m) summit. Besides strong tropical winds and rains, the black lava really bakes as it absorbs heat from the tropical sun. More amazing than that, these orchids survive dangerous levels of sulfur dioxide gas that vent nearby, although we took our hike on a day when the winds were in our favor. The final photo shows the eastern section of Kilauea Iki with the forest growing on its walls and rim. At this end the crater is 400 ft. (122 m) deep and over 1 mile (1.6 km) wide.
This month brings major orchid shows in Tokyo, Miami, and here in San Francisco. There are also big flower shows in Philadelphia and Atlanta. And there are plenty of shows on Valentine’s weekend so your sweetheart can have fresh orchid blooms.
