{"id":2765,"date":"2010-03-20T14:16:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T22:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=2765"},"modified":"2011-05-06T07:39:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T15:39:15","slug":"spring-equinox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/20\/spring-equinox\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Equinox"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll start today’s celebration of spring with a few nice photos. The first is a sweetly scented Iwanagara, a Cattleya<\/a> hybrid. Next is a Paph<\/a> species native to China, and then a Jasmine that’s bursting into bloom in our back garden.<\/p>\n

\"Iwanagara<\/a>\"Lady<\/a>\"Jasmine<\/a><\/p>\n

Here in San Francisco, we set a record high of 80F (27C) yesterday, and although today is a more seasonal 65F (18C,) spring is definitely here. But even if winter is not releasing its grip in your neck of the woods, there’s one more reason to celebrate. This news article<\/a> in The Independent<\/em> of London describes the exciting rediscovery of the bizarre Ghost Orchid, long believed to be extinct in Great Britain.<\/p>\n

Britain’s Ghost Orchid<\/a> shares the same common name with the famous Ghost Orchid of Florida’s swamps<\/a> in The Orchid Thief<\/em><\/a>, but they’re two completely different species. However, Britain’s Ghost Orchid may be even more peculiar than Florida’s. Neither species has leaves, but the British species “behaves more like a fungus than a flower, according to the naturalist Peter Marren, author of Britain’s Rare Flowers<\/em><\/a>.” It lives underground, and doesn’t depend on sunlight. Instead, it makes food in its roots with the help of a fungus. It only comes into view with small, ghostly white flowers when conditions are right. As the holy grail of British botany, it’s rediscovery certainly adds a boost to any spring celebration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll start today’s celebration of spring with a few nice photos. The first is a sweetly scented Iwanagara, a Cattleya hybrid. Next is a Paph species native to China, and then a Jasmine that’s bursting into bloom in our back garden. Here in San Francisco, we set a record high of 80F (27C) yesterday, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,21,12,22,20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-conservation","category-fragrant-orchids","category-in-the-news","category-misc","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2765"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2819,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions\/2819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}