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| Homestead Magazine Summer 2008: Jungle love |
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By Steve Werblow
Orchids' beauty and wiles lure people as well as pollinators
Some people love their tulips. Some
people love roses. But no flower inspires
the passion—or sparks the obsession—
that orchids do.
Stepping into the greenhouses
of Andy’s Orchids in Encinitas,
Calif., helps explain why. It’s a journey
into a strange world that’s part beauty
pageant and part freak show. It’s a world of
sex and deception, where highly specialized
flowers have evolved beautiful patterns or
devious traps to get birds, bees, or butterflies
(or flies, gnats, or bats) to help them pass
along their genes. It’s a world where Technicolor
blooms the size of dinner plates flash
beside cascades of flowers so tiny that they
could share the head of a pin. It’s the world
of orchids, and every bloom tells a story.
Different personalities. "Once you get past, 'they’re pretty flowers,' or 'I like the fragrance,' you see that they have different personalities," says Harry Phillips, who built the first greenhouses in the 1980s to house his brother Andy’s collection and now heads up sales for Andy’s Orchids. "When you say 'Bulbophyllum'—the largest genus of orchids in the world—you’ve said 'weird' and 'strange' in
thousands of different ways."
Andy Phillips’ collection—now representing
more than 5,000 species—sprawls over
more than an acre of greenhouses and outdoor
gardens, where he has created environments
to suit orchids from every corner of the earth.
After all, orchids are native to the steaming
jungles of Brazil, India, and Asia. They
grow on windswept cliffs high in the Andes
and in the hardwood forests of the North
Carolina coast. Orchids have a reputation
for being hard to raise, but much of the challenge may be finding the right conditions to
suit the species you’re raising.
Worldwide guests. Harry Phillips points out that a new species that was flagging in a greenhouse perked right up as soon as Andy put it outside for a taste of cooler air. A little research indicated that the orchid came from alpine meadows, which explained why it
wasn’t thriving in the hothouse’s faux jungle.
"Growing orchids is like being an innkeeper,"
Harry says. "You have guests from
all over the world. Those guests have different
tastes, different expectations. It’s getting
to know what the orchid likes. Like any good
innkeeper, if you have happy guests, you’ll
have a good business. And if you have unhappy
guests, they’ll check out permanently."
Being a good host for your orchids doesn’t
have to be difficult, says Harry. It helps to
choose species that suit your conditions, from
how often you’re around to water your plants
to whether you’ll need to provide supplemental
lighting during short winter days.
"Picking an orchid that likes you and your
conditions is almost like dating," says Harry.
You have to pay attention to how your orchid
is feeling, watching roots, bulbs, and canes
for signs of distress. The payoff: "Once you’ve
learned the language of orchids, you can
grow just about any plant," he says.
There are other payoffs, too. There’s the rare opportunity to experience the fragrance of flowers that may only release their scent for a few hours. There’s the reward of coaxing
an elegant bloom from a finicky species. And there’s a front-row seat to some of nature’s most dramatic scenes, the dance between an orchid and its pollinator.
Draculatus bella lures fungus gnats with
a ribbed lip that looks like a tasty fungus.
Catasetum pileatum takes a more active role, slapping a pair of pollen sacs onto a visiting bee’s head with a dab of glue.
The upside-down flowers of Stanhopea
provide male euglossine bees with a scented
oil that the bees use as perfume to attract fe-males. And Trichoceros "fly orchids" look and
smell so much like female flies that they lure
male flies into frenzied mating, tricking the
frustrated insects into passing on their pollen.
Then there’s color. The striking stripes and
spots of many Dendrobium orchids are eyecatching to humans. To pollinators, they’re
intensely practical—directional signals, like
airport landing lights that guide them straight
to the heart of the flower.
Orchids have never been so available. Though they have a reputation for being expensive—
and the $300,000 paid for a rare Samurai orchid at a recent auction certainly boosts that image—most of Andy’s Orchids sell for between $16 and $40, says Harry.
Art and science. Just be warned—your first orchid may well not be your last. "It’s an addiction, there’s no doubt about it," Harry laughs. "There’s something about orchids. There’s a magical property."
The magic can last a lifetime, he adds.
"Growing orchids is part science and part
art," says Harry. "You can’t possibly learn everything that there is to know about orchids,
so you’re constantly challenged."
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