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022703 Forget (Costa Rica); Head for the Bronx
F
you can't afford to fly to Hawaii, Costa Rica or Moorea this weekend, you could
take a train to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and plunge into a
cloud forest — full of thousands of orchids blooming among the tree ferns and
palms.
"A Celebration of Orchids," which opens tomorrow at the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and runs for a month, will rotate 3,000 orchids through its exhibition. Specimens from all over the world will bloom under one roof, from Old World vandas and cymbidiums, to South American lady-slippers, like the scarlet Phragmipedium besseae, discovered in Peru in 1981 and promptly scooped up by hybridizers to create multicolored orchids for the home. Lectures and workshops will accompany the show.
"Our goal was to go behind the pleasures of a flower show, to build a museum exhibition of the larger orchid story of the world," Dr. Kim E. Tripp, the vice president of horticulture at the garden, said last week, as gardeners pushed carts full of moth orchids, dancing lady orchids and big beefy bulldog orchids into the glass galleries. There were tall cymbidiums, discovered in the Himalayas and hybridized into showy corsages for the school prom. There were low terrestrials, like Grapette, an Asian spathoglottis orchid, with little clusters of purple flowers poking out of its leaves. It is used as a ground cover in Miami.
The New York Botanical Garden's own orchid collection includes about 5,000 specimens, most from the New World because its botanists have traditionally explored Central and South America. Many of those species are rare and endangered, acquired through rescue operations as forests were cut down for development, or from federal agents confiscating wild orchids from people not unlike John Laroche, the renegade collector in Susan Orlean's book "The Orchid Thief."
"These orchids are given to us, and we become their stewards," Dr. Tripp said. One of the botanical garden's oldest orchids, an acampe acquired in 1904, is more than 100 years old. Now the garden is expanding its collection to specimens from all over the world, and after the exhibition — to which many other gardens and growers have contributed new plants — its collection will increase to about 10,000 specimens. But that's just a drop in the bucket. There are an estimated 30,000 species of orchids, and hundreds of thousands of cultivars in the world, said Darrin Duling, the exhibition's curator with Francisca Coelho, the conservatory's manager.
The Chinese were writing about orchids as early as 800 B.C., but it wasn't until the late 1700's that Western explorers first saw them in tropical China. They created a sensation similar to tulip fever.
"Overnight, there was this mad feeding frenzy in England," Mr. Duling said. "Everyone had to have orchids. Private estates or nurseries would send out their own explorers, some never to be heard from again."
There were stories of man-eating plants. Or maybe the explorers just fell into a hole — or were assassinated by another orchid collector. "There were actual orchid spies who spied on nurseries and estates, and even plotted murder," said Mr. Duling, who has pored over 18th-century journals to find those details, which were rarely recorded by the press. "It was the prestige of having the only one of something, and people would go to great lengths to hide the origin of these plants. They would hack down trees, destroying entire forests to get the orchids."
The intrigue is still there. The film "Adaptation," loosely based on Ms. Orlean's book, turns the elusive ghost orchid into a siren of the Florida swamp. "I've seen the ghost orchid," Mr. Duling whispered. (His last job, as horticulture director of the American Orchid Society in Florida, was building the society's five-acre display forest in Delray Beach, Fla.) Then he added quickly: "We don't glorify that part of orchids here. We want to stress conservation and collecting for scientific purposes."
But orchids can't help being a show. The botanical garden's exhibition includes a garden folly by Philip Baloun, who designed the rest of the show: an abandoned explorers' camp, covered with vines, its floor collapsing under the fertile jungle. "What sets me on fire is seeing orchids growing in the wild," Mr. Duling said. "In the rain forest, you really get a sense of your own mortality. Everything is food, including yourself."
Mr. Duling, a field botanist trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London, has walked through the forests of Borneo, Thailand and South Florida. In Thailand, in 1997, he helped build a wild reserve and botanic garden on 5,000 acres for Queen Sirikit. So it must feel a bit tame here in the Bronx. After all, this is just a glass house: those terrestrials are growing in pots sunk into soil piled on the greenhouse floor; the epiphytes are dangling from the branches of sassafras trees pruned from the garden grounds.
"But we hope to give people a feel of moving through a cloud forest and coming upon them," Mr. Duling said.
He hopes to have a Darwin's orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, from Madagascar, in bloom. "We have one with one bud," Mr. Duling said. "We're hoping it won't fall off." In 1862, Charles Darwin predicted that the orchid, which has a 12-inch spur, would require an insect with a proboscis at least that long to pollinate it. "Everyone said, `Oh, Charles, you're nuts.' " Mr. Duling said. Forty years later, a nocturnal hawk moth, Xanthopan morgani praedicta, with a proboscis about a foot long, was discovered.
It's not hard to take care of orchids, if you think about how they grow in the wild. Oncidium orchids, or dancing lady orchids, for instance, grow high in treetops, where they get lots of rain and ventilation.
"The rain runs right off; they're constantly immersed in a soup of dust, insect bits, bird droppings, nutrients in the rain," Mr. Duling said. So water once a week, with a very dilute solution of fertilizer — about one-quarter strength — which, he said, "replicates that steady stream of organic broth."
Marc Hachadourian, 29, the garden's orchid propagator, showed off an Asian orchid, Dendrochilum latifolium, which has 10-inch chains of tiny gold and yellow flowers. "They're so different and not that difficult to grow," he said. They will bloom for a month. Another easy orchid for the home is Phaius, which blooms for two to three months, from February to May, so it gets you through the winter months. There's an orchid called Kryptonite, which is a cross between Phaius and Calanthe, that ranges in color from white to pink to cherry red.
The Phaius orchids are terrestrials easily grown in well-drained potting soil lightened with peat moss, and a little bark for extra drainage. Orchids like bright, indirect light. If you have a southern exposure, use a sheer curtain for filtering light, and set the plants a bit back from the window.
The exhibition at the botanical garden is timed to coincide with the 22nd New York International Orchid Show at Rockefeller Center, which runs from March 21 through March 24. For information, (201) 767-0621.
Phragmipedium besseae, the South American lady-slipper with the bright red flower, has produced many hybrids in sunset shades. And these too are relatively easy to grow. "It can stay in bloom for months at a time," Mr. Hachadourian said. "And these are great for chronic overwaterers. They like the same conditions as a houseplant. If you're comfortable, they're comfortable."
P. besseae is related to P. kovachii, which was recently found by a Virginia nursery owner, Michael Kovach, at a roadside stand in Peru. Its magenta and purple blossoms are half a foot across. Mr. Kovach took his magnificent find to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla. But scientists don't know where it grows in the wild or what pollinates it. The phrags, as they are affectionately called, are being cultivated by the thousands, to prevent them from being collected to extinction.
Mr. Hachadourian pointed out that orchids manufacture many perfumes, some better than others, to attract bees, flies, moths and spiders. Bulbophyllum beccarii, a native to Borneo, which is pollinated by flies, "smells like a dead elephant," he said. Cattleyas, also 1950's corsage queens, can smell like roses, lemons or butter cream. "We have one in the propagation range, Gongora, that smells like Scotch tape," he said. An oncidium hybrid, Sharry Baby, smells like chocolate chip cookies.
So drop by the conservatory and have a sniff. You might fall in love, even though you're not an insect. Check out a brassidium called Fly Away Miami, which is bright yellow with brown spots. It blooms two or three times a year. Look for Schomburgkia superbiens, a South American beauty, which is holding its big pompoms of little pink flowers over the dark reflecting pool in the palm house. It is about seven feet tall, all told. So this one might be perfect for a prewar apartment.