Vanda luzonica

Vanda luzonica

In 2006 we installed three enormous specimens of the lovely Philippine orchid, Vanda luzonica in the Orchid Display House, two like bookends atop the cedar pergola and one on a cork tree. The effect was instant jungle. You could practically hear the sinuous roots hissing as they coiled through the cascade of stems. What a terrifically theatrical plant to add to a tropical garden!

Luxuriance is not to everyone's taste. Alex Hawkes, the distinguished American horticulturist, in his classic Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids notes disapprovingly that Vanda luzonica is "often rather rank-growing."

Not surprisingly, Vanda luzonica is strictly lowland tropical. It grows at 500 m. elevation in wet forests on the island of Luzon. Pour on the heat, moisture and fertilizer, and it will one day overwhelm you.

I love the pristine white petals. Vanda luzonica is flowering now in our Orchid Display House.

Spotlight on You

Stanhopea connata

Hey, photographers! I've seen you here with your tripod. How about some national recognition for your work? Or $1,000? Horticulture Magazine's Garden Photo Contest wraps up September 30. It's easy to submit entries online. Maximum file size, 2MB. Why not submit your gorgeous orchid photos?

Baby Boom in the Orchid Nursery

Orchid seedlings in one of our back up greenhouses

A big priority for us this year has been to pollinate some of the choicest orchids in our collection. We have two goals. The first is to generate more plants for installation in the Fuqua Orchid Center. The second, and more important, is to reinvigorate our collection by producing healthy young seedlings.

Sarah removes the anther cap from Anguloa clowesii

Selfing, or fertilizing a plant with its own pollen, is simple and can produce a reasonable percentage of vigorous orchid seedlings. But many rare orchids in collections today are highly inbred, the result of many generations of selfings. Some are the descendants of just a single plant collected in the wild decades ago, before CITIES restricted importation. Unfortunately, an inbred plant often grows poorly, a tendency that becomes more pronounced with age.

Removing the pollinarium from the anther cap

Any plant that is maintained in a collection for many years needs to be vegetatively propagated by cuttings or division at intervals in order to provide replacement material. But when inbreeding contributes to its decline, then performing an outcross (i.e., use genetically different parents to produce seed) can be the best way to obtain healthy offspring while preserving some of the original genes. Outcrossing introduces new genes into the next generation and means that more offspring will be vigorous.

Sarah pollinating Anguloa clowesii

Data-the date and parentage- is recorded on a label and on a form and then transferred to an Excel file

The label is attached to the orchid below the  ovary

In upcoming posts we will follow the development of some of our pods.

Sunday Edition

For your weekend reading, a brief round up of news and plant-related goodies from online media and the blogosphere.

Before the storm: The Fern Room at Garfield Park Conservatory

• Garfield Park Conservatory Update. After a devastating storm on June 30 destroyed 40,000 panes of glass, a monumental effort is underway to clean up the historic conservatory as the staff races to relocate or protect the remaining plants from approaching cold weather. A fundraising program, 'One Pane at a Time' has been launched simultaneously. Video footage at [Chicago Tribune]
• RBG Kew Update. A change in executive leadership at a major botanical garden is big news in the botanical garden world. The Royal Botanic Garden Kew has announced that Director Stephen Hopper will leave his post in 2012. A search begins immediately for his successor. [GardenNews]
• At last, a truly red Phalaenopsis. Go to the 4th image. [BBC News]
• Paola Pedraza, Assistant Curator at the Institute of Systematic Botany, NYBG, is filing more her fascinating dispatches from the Choco region of Colombia. The Choco is one of the most species-rich areas on earth and one of the last great places for orchid discovery. Her field work is exhilarating and exhausting. You can see some of the orchids and tropical blueberries that she writes about in our Tropical High Elevation House. [NYTimes]

Pleurothallis titan, Clamshell Orchid

Visitors to the Topical High Elevation House often react with confusion when they see the heart shaped leaves of Pleurothallis (Acronia) titan in the Fuqua Orchid Center. Aroid? Begonia? Few people guess that this plant with Philodendron-like leaves and clamshell flowers is an orchid.

Pleurothallis titan

I love the canary yellow flowers that this orchid produces year round. But what's really marvellous about this plant is its ability to overturn commonly held notions of what an orchid looks like. At first glance the clamshell may not look like a Cattleya flower, but upon closer inspection...

Miltonia spectabilis, a Midsummer Night's Dream

Miltonia spectabilis var. moreliana

'Spectabilis' means outstanding. What is outstanding about this Miltonia? The undulating margin of the lavender lip reminds me of Ginger Rogers long flowing evening gown. The lip is beautifully set off against the dusky plum backdrop of the orchid's petals and sepals. Very satiny. Very sophisticated.

Admittedly, the plant has an idiosyncratic growth habit. The internodes (i.e., the length of stem between the pseudobulbs) are very long, giving the plant a sprawling habit best accommodated by a wide shallow basket. And the leaves and stems are an almost alarmingly vivid shade of yellow-green, a color normally associated with poor culture. Not to worry. This is the normal leaf color for Miltonia spectabilis.

But it is in mid-late summer, when many other orchids take a hiatus from flowering, that my admiration for this Brazilian species deepens into a warm affection. Last week I set a pod on one of our plants in the Fuqua Orchid Center. A dozen more, please!

A Terrestrial Triptych

I'm forever on the look out for terrestrial orchids of tropical origin that we can display in the Fuqua Orchid Center. The list of commercially available terrestrial genera just isn't that long or varied: Paphiopedilum (Asian Slipper) is, of course, one of our core collections. Phaius (Nun's Orchid) and its cousin Calanthe, wonderful though they are, become the kind of pest magnets that make me grind my teeth. The gorgeous Warrea and Gastrorchis can be elusive in commerce. Ludisia (Jewel Orchid) is for shady corners only. And Spathiglottis (Ground Orchid) is as utilitarian an orchid as you could ever hope to find.

Habenaria, where have you been all my life?

Habenaria rhodocheila

Meet H. rhodocheila, radiant gem from tropical evergreen forests in South China, Thailand, peninsular Malaysia and the Philippines, growing @1100 meters.

Habenaria carnea

H. carnea from 600 m. elevation on limestone in coastal southwestern Thailand. The epithet carnea refers to the flesh-toned flowers.

Habenaria medusa

And the otherworldly H. medusa, who we met earlier, grows @600 m. in Laos, Vietnam and the islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Sulawesi.

Habenaria is, of course, a huge genus of over 500 species occurring in temperate and tropical regions across the globe. The temperate zone species are not so amenable to cultivation. But the three tropical species above are.