Species Orchids: True Love

Much as I love the hybrids, the man-made orchids, I am hugely attracted to the ones that look just like they do in the wild. A lot of orchid fanciers go over to what they call the "species" orchids, and never go back to hybrids. At this point, I'm happy somewhere in between.

At the New England Flower Show in Boston in 2006, I spied a terrific looking specimen of Dendrobium kingianum. This is a very common species in Australia, called the pink rock orchid.  But I'd never seen it, and you don't see it much in cultivation.

It was a huge plant, covered in tiny pink flowers that were intensely fragrant. Oh, I wanted a little bitty piece of it so badly. I couldn't bring the entire plant back home on the plane, even if I could have afforded it. I eyed the plant, and finally asked the exhibitor if she would consider selling me a little cutting of it.

She eyed me right back. She could see the lust. "I don't know," she said. "You feeling lucky today?"

I laughed. "Where orchids are concerned, I'm always feeling lucky," I answered. 

"Take one," she said. "No charge."  She knew what it was to really want a plant.

I was so delighted! I chose an inconspicuous bulblet on the enormous plant, twisted it off, and stuck it down my shirt.

And now, five years later, the Little King is on its gangbustin' way, stinkin' up the whole room with a few little flowers. It will only get better as the years go by. That's what I love about orchids. That, and propagating teeny pieces into wonderful plants.

Getting better as years go by...another cutting I took in 2006, of a magnificent Guatemalan specimen of Encyclia cordigera, is in full, glorious bloom right now, emanating a honeysuckle fragrance when the eastern sun shines on it. It's the purple one in this photo.

The thing I notice about both these species orchids is their incredible vigor and hardiness. 

Every spring it throws a couple more bulbules, and makes a few more flower spikes. It is a true delight.

Oh, for Smellovision.

It's getting really big. I honestly wonder what's going to happen when these things reach their full bushel-basket size. Probably time to repot...

If I had to pick a favorite in my small collection, it would come down to Encyclia cordigera and the insanely satisfying Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos." Well, come to think of it, that one's a species orchid too, waving its dancing red and yellow kabuki lobster men in the Trinidadian understory. What do you know.

 You talkin' to me? Yes, you, Hildos, you gorgeous  species orchid. I mean, how cool is this flower? No improving on that!

Who knows. Over time, I may just go over to the species side. One could do worse than be a lover of  orchids, pure and wild.

The Why of Orchids

The east window, where orchids get just the right amount of sun, year-round.

I often hear from people who say that they can keep orchids alive, but the plants won't rebloom.
Maybe it's true--you haven't got the touch, or you haven't got the accommodations orchids most prefer. But maybe not. I think it's important to keep in mind that orchid time is a very slow time. You can expect one flush of bloom each year. And sometimes it takes two or three years for a plant to rest and recuperate, until it decides it's happy and it takes off.
Note the humidity trays, always kept filled. But the orchids never sit in water; they're elevated on tiles so their roots don't get soggy and rot. When the trays evaporate dry, I refill them with really hot water. That keeps the algae and insects in check.

About reblooming: Most orchids sold in grocery stores and warehouses have been fertilized like crazy and pushed to bloom hard at a very young age. Maybe after that flush of bloom finishes, they need to catch their breath for a year or two. An older plant simply has more reserves, more leaves or more pseudobulbs (the swellings at the base of leaves in cattleya and oncidium types) to make more food. And it's so worth it to wait out that youthful period and let your plants mature and really show what they can do. That's when it gets fun, and addictive.

You grow together, like compatible partners. You find out what each plant likes, developing an empathy over the years.

The most basic requirement of orchids is sufficient light. I suspect that 90% of the problems people report with orchids failing to rebloom revolve around insufficient light. Many folks keep them on mantels or end tables because they look so pretty there, and forget that this is a plant with a need for strong light--yes, even direct sunlight! You wouldn't expect a gardenia to bloom and thrive on a coffee table, so why should an orchid? East window, a few hours of sun each day--that's ideal for most orchids.

Speaking of empathy, I get a lot of orchids as waifs. People buy them in bloom and then enjoy them while they're blooming, but forget to water them or maybe put them on an end table or in a sunny hot west window or cook them over a radiator. By the time they get to me the leaves are limp and hanging over the pot and the roots are rotted and the plant is gasping its last. I knock the plant out of the pot and trim off all the dead roots and put it in fresh medium and mist it every day. And it's amazing how it will spring back and say thank you thank you thank you. It's gratifying.

This was a very fine Doritaenopsis that was badly handled at our local Kroger's. It had been left out in 20-degree weather on a rack and all but two of its leaves froze off. I brought this beautiful plant home only to see its leaves turn to yellow mush and fall off within two days. That was two years ago. I coddled it and loved it and now it's springing back so beautifully, making new leaves and even sending up a marvelous, branched flower spike this spring. See how those leaves stand straight out? They're full of turgor pressure--they don't droop flaccidly over the sides of the pot. That's the sign of a very happy orchid. It's going to be a magnificent plant in another two years. Orchids are very forgiving, very long-lived, and so much tougher than people realize. It literally takes years to kill one.



I started this little Iwangara "Appleblossom" from one little pseudobulb from a plant of mine that had become infested with mealybugs. Unable to rid it of mealybugs, I threw the mother plant out and put all my faith in this offshoot. And oh, how it has rewarded that faith.


Such an elegant, fragrant flower it has--almost like a corsage.
Laeliocattleya x Encyclia cordigera "Pixie" sat around thinking for three years after I bought it in bloom. No buds. Nothin' doin'. And then, this spring, this:


I think it wanted to be misted, that's what I think. In fact, all my plants wanted to be misted. So now I mist them a couple of times a day. We all enjoy it. It's such a simple thing to do, and once I saw the jaw-dropping results, I really began to enjoy spritzing them.


Phalaenopsis "Lava Glow" is such a great little plant. Red is a rare color. And the magenta lip kills me.

You can sometimes find Lava Glow in Loew's. Although Loew's is an awful place for a great orchid, or any orchid. I've never been able to figure out what our local Loew's gains by never watering its orchid stock. The honor of having them drop all their buds and die? The thrill of throwing them out?

I know where the taps are at our Loew's. I go get a new watering can off the shelf and fill it up and water their damn orchids, that's what I do. And I don't buy them there. I buy orchids at orchid shows. Half the price and twice the quality. And should I ever see a red-vested employee lurking around the orchids, I ask them why no one cares for their inventory. Invariably I get: It isn't my job. It's so-and-so's job, and she's out sick/elsewhere. Oh, well, of course. Why should anyone else care? How can anyone walk by a plant that's screaming for water, dying right before their eyes?

With orchids, I grow what I can. There are some orchids I know better than to try: Miltonia, Zygopetalum, Phragmipedium, Cymbidium; the really big cattleyas. I stick to what I can grow well, and what's small enough to fit into a bursting collection.

I branched out a bit for this Psychopsis mendenhall "Hildos." I bought it for $25. It had one 3" long leaf. The grower, Kim Stehli of Windswept in Time Orchids, who I trust implicitly, assured me it'd be worth it. "Just wait!" she said. "This is my favorite orchid."
So I waited. Here's the tag, with my notes:

Bought in April '07 with one leaf. It sent up a spike and by June '08 it was blooming. By October '09 it had made 13 blossoms and was adding a fifth leaf. That leaf threw out a second flower spike in April '10. And here's that new spike. It really wouldn't have had to do that. I was delighted with it as it was.

But wait! The old spike is still blooming away.

With this.
Hold your hand up, fingers spread. That's how big that flower is. It waves, chest high to me, on its wiry, yard-long stem. Kim told me that she's known a single Psychopsis spike to keep blooming for seven years. So we never cut off Psychopsis flower spikes until they wither away on their own. They always have a bud up their sleeve.

It is over the top, ridiculous, dearly loved. With two spikes throwing out flower after flower, it has the potential of being everblooming. Yes, just wait. It'll be worth it. Everything good is worth waiting for. Orchids illustrate that, magnificently.

My Garden Fantasy

Native Missouri primrose, Oenothera spectabilis, in bloom by our garage. Keeping good company with a European field daisy.

A wee garden tour for you.

Every year there is a garden tour in Marietta, Ohio, the town nearest us. Well, it's still about 20 miles away. And the Marietta garden tour is one of my favorite events of the year, because the kids and I get to walk through other people's backyards and see what they think is pretty. It's kind of like watching "Cops," where you get to go inside those houses that you might only drive by with a little shudder. Well, it's actually nothing like watching "Cops," but I think you know what I mean. You get to poke around, to snoop, to see what other people do and think and plant.

I have always wanted to be on the Marietta garden tour, to open my gardens to viewing. But since hundreds and hundreds of people visit the gardens, they would have to have a set of chartered buses or the world's most bodacious carpool to get them the twenty miles out here from town. So it's never going to happen, but I always go on the tour and wish. I could give a good garden tour.

I could show everyone such a good time. I'd open my tree swallow box and voila! there would be sweetly smiling rubber swallow babies cuddled down amidst the feathers.


We'd take in the view of the north shade bed along the front of the house


and admire the aptly-named Salvia superba, the culinary sage plant I grew from a seed many years ago. Put a few of those leaves in butter and throw some portobella ravioli in that butter and you have something, ma'am. And I use the leaves year-round, fresh from the plant.


I'd have my assistant, Phoebe, go in the house and fetch the blooming Psychopsis mendenhall "Hildos."


We'd set it up in front of the blooming sage plant, just for color overkill.


Everyone would gasp and want to photograph this chest-high wonder.


The eastern phoebe would tear some fibers from the cocoa mat planters, and pause on her way to the nest on our special shelf, put up just for her.

Then she'd fetch up on the Garden Forge ornament, while the Knockout rose bloomed and bloomed. Gasp!


And that's just the front bed. Mmmm. Such a sweet dream. I guess I'll have to share it with you all instead. Come to think of it, that's way better than having to weed my fingers to the nubs and clean the house and try to get the dirt out from under my nails in time for the first busload to roll up. Virtual garden tour!

That Crazy Psychopsis

Speaking of growth, rebirth and change, the Psychopsis mendenhall "Hildos" orchid that started blooming on my bedroom windowsill in June is STILL blooming, throwing flower after flower off its meter-high spike. I LOVE THIS PLANT. SOOOO MUCH.

It's as if all it wants to do is delight me.

I was dying to see how it opened, so I took a series of photos of Blossoms #3 and 4 as they went from closed bud to crane head to flamenco-dancing lobster dude.

At this point the bud looks like the skull of a crazy bird, maybe an ibis or flamingo.

It doesn't take more than overnight for it to go to this folded miracle:
You can see the next bud cued up. How considerate of the orchid, to have another bud forming in the wings when this flower finally withers and falls with a plop in the middle of the night.Ta-DAA! I am OUT!And I am the kabuki lobster dude, mixing genres, phyla and metaphors, doing my manly flamenco for your viewing pleasure for the next week and a half.

Psychopsis mendenhall is native to Trinidad, where its brilliant blossoms dance singly on long stems in the forest gloom. Imagine such a thing, encountered in the wild.

And now, given sun, rainwater and orchid food, it opens five-inch wide blossoms on my windowsill. Life is good.

Well, HeLOO There!

Orchid fanciers among you will remember, perhaps, my disappointment at my Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos" when, in May, it dropped a bud that had been forming since February 2008. I'd been watching this spike grow, passing a full yard in height, watching this bud form, delighting in the little elf-shoe curl it attained, only to see it drop off immediately after this photo was taken. Plunk. Oh.

I took comfort in the fact that another bud was forming beneath it, in the hope that perhaps that one would come to open. Fast forward a month. It's 3 AM, and Bill and I are getting the kids ready for bed, having just arrived from Utah: 3 1/2 hours on the road; 6 hours on airplanes. "Was there supposed to be a big flower on that orchid?" Bill asked as he emerged from the bedroom.

"AGGGH!" Suddenly remembering what awaited, I ran to the bedroom to be greeted by THIS.I laughed like a hyena for ten minutes, hollering to the kids to get back out of bed and come see what had happened in the bedroom while we were gone. I was jumping around like Daffy Duck. Four inches across, six and one-half inches high it is, and it dances at the end of a yard-long stem, embodying everything joyous and insane and wonderful about orchids, about loving a plant, caring for it carefully, listening to it tell me what it needs, and being rewarded beyond my wildest dream by a single flower opening.

Let's have a closer look at that little flamenco-dancing lobster. Is that a face I see? Or two?I believe there are two faces here, a mustachioed monkey, perhaps an emperor tamarin, and a beautiful snobby puma. Emperor tamarin photo by AFP/Getty Images, from daylife.com.

See if you can find them.There's another bud forming beneath this one. This time, perhaps, I'll be here as it opens. I want to see how it does that.

NOW are you going to go out and get yourself an orchid? What's stopping you?

More Orchids

In March 2006, I bought two little seedlings, tiny enough to both fit in my palm, at a flower show in Chicago where I was speaking. It was so cold that I put them in my shirt for the ride to the hotel and airport. I didn't know what they'd look like when they bloomed, but I was willing and eager to wait. Hey, I'd be waiting anyway. Might as well have something to look forward to. One is blooming now, and here's what I got.

It's Phalaenopsis "Brother Coral" x "Everspring Pearl." And guess what? It's fragrant!! I do like it! Worth the wait!

With orchid crosses like this, people hand-pollinate the flowers with a brush, and when the dustlike seeds form and ripen in the pod, they scatter them on agar (a seaweed derived nutrient medium gel) in a closed flask. When the seeds germinate, they're almost microscopic. The seedlings are grown on in the flask until they're big enough to transplant. You don't really know for sure what you'll get, since some seedlings will have more properties of one parent than the other. Buying seedlings is a bit of a crapshoot, but I like that kind of gamble.

Iwangara 'Appleblossom" is a hybrid cross of Brassaevola, Cattleya, Diacrium (Caularthron) and Laelia orchids. Yes. A quadrigeneric hybrid. This is part of what is so dang cool about orchids. They are man-made, and yet manage to be so beautiful through it all. Someone decides he (or she) likes the growth habit of one, the fragrance of another, the color of another, the form of another, let's say, and crosses the plants and comes up with something unknown in nature, something virtually unnameable. So then they have to come up with a new genus name for this creation. Hence the bizarre genus Iwangara. It has a terrific growth habit, with nice fat pseudobulbs and springy arching paired leaves. And, like most of my others, it's wildly fragrant. Stinks up the room, it does. Ahhhh. In the picture below, you get a hint of that growth habit. Big plant! Has its own pedestal.

For pure bizarreness, it's hard to beat the Paphiopedalums, or slipper orchids. This is Paph. Emerald "Buint Ruby" x Paph. superbens "King." They're the most fun to photograph, with light coming through their petals.

It's on its second year with me, and it's made incredible growth from the seedling stage. The whole affair is about 2' tall. Love that checkered foliage, too. This flower will last two to three MONTHS on the plant. Most of my orchid flowers last two or more months. That's just another thing to love about them.

Back in February, I wrote about a very special orchid I bought last May--Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos." It was just a seedling, with two leaves (sound familiar?). Over the past year, it put out three great big mottled leaves, and in February 2008 I noticed something protruding from beneath them. It was, against all expectations, the plant's first flower spike. I really had no idea what I was in for, but I knew it would be good.

Here's what it looks like now. The spike is 37" tall. Yes. From a plant in a 2" plastic pot. Obviously, a very happy plant. Hildos lives in the east bedroom window, and loves to be bathed in sun for a few hours a day.

At the tip of that yard-tall spike is a very hopeful and bizarre-looking bud. The stem flattened out like a newt's tail and made a little tulip-shaped bud at the end. It has changed even more over the past few days since I took these pictures. And it is driving me crazy, because I think it's going to open while I'm away.

There is a precedent: Phoebe took her first steps the evening I left her with her daddy overnight for the first time. Some things in life just aren't fair. I came back from my overnight trip, and my baby was walking. I fully expected to come home from North Dakota and find this flower open.

Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos."

Since I wrote this post, I found that the bud had swelled and enlarged until it looked like an elf's shoe. Yesterday, I photographed it, but I was troubled by its color--a bit yellow. This morning, I looked closely at the bud again, and touched it oh so gently with a fingertip, whereupon it promptly fell off. Well, isn't that special. You wait since February and watch this thing grow to three feet and you know it only has one flower at a time but that one's a lollapalooza, and the very first bud falls off before it opens. However...there is another bud right beneath the stump of the first one, and I choose to interpret this inauspicious event as the plant trying not to bloom while I'm off giving a talk somewhere. Ahem.

Can I get an ARRRGHHH from the choir? It was my personal Belmont Stakes moment.

And looking on the bright side, this spike will live for years, unlike those of the Phalaenopsis orchids, which generally wither when the flowers do. It will throw out one blossom after another. I'm already nervous about repotting this plant, since they are said to resent disturbance. I would too, if I had a 3' flower spike. Oh well. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So that, my friends, is what's blooming (and dropping much-anticipated buds) right now on Indigo Hill. Inside the house, that is.