Valentines Orchid Show 2020
These have moved men to madness and mania, have inspired adventure and exploration. They have made people wealthy and bankrupted others. To this day millions of people obsess with them. What are they? They are the exotic orchids. What a better way to enjoy the mutitude of shapes, colors and fragrances that these plants come in than to visit the annual orchid show hosted at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Toronto by the Southern Ontario Orchid Society (SOOS).
It was heartening to see how many people had crowded to wait in freezing temperatures for the show to open. Once the doors opened the flood started. Interestingly enough most people ran directly to the sales area hoping to snag their favorite orchids before they sold out, even before they went to the main display area!!! Truly orchids still inspire people to obsess about them even in the cold winters of Canada.
There are more than 30,000 species of orchid in the world and many more are being discovered every year. There are more than 100,000 registered hybrids a testament to our obsession with these beautiful flowering plants. But what makes these plants even more special is the fact that they can be found on every single continent except Antarctica. They occupy every single ecological niche that you can imagine. There are epiphytic orchids as well as terrestrials. They can be found above 12,000 feet above snow lines of mountains or growing in salt water sprays as halophytes, they grow far north in the arctic circle and in deserts, cloud forests, rain forests, savannas, deciduous forests. There are even specialized orchids that spend there whole life cycle underground including a species (Rizanthella gardneri) found in Australia that even flowers underground!!! Many of the habitats that these orchids thrive in are disappearing due to human activity and climate change. Illegal collection of orchids has also brought many species to the verge of extinction. Lets hope orchid enthusiasts will be responsible and source plants that are cultivated from reputable dealers.
Orchids have been part of human history from ancient times. The Greeks used them for medicinal purposes. They were also used as for medicinal purposes in India and China. Confucius wrote about the beauty and perfume of orchids 2000 years ago. We still use orchids in the form of vanilla extracted from the vanilla orchid seeds in our sweets and pastries. In Turkey a drink called salep is made from Orchis tubers. The perfume industry extracts scents and essential oils from them to use for aroma therapy and expensive perfumes. But orchids are used the most for the horticultural industy for their beautiful flowers creating a global multi-billion dollar industry.
When orchids from the tropics started to come to Europe particularly England it started started a craze that had the rich and aristocratic sponsor expeditions to the corners of the world in search of new plants and the bragging rights of owning them. Exorbitant amounts of money exchanged hands for the rarest and showiest varieties. The Duke of Devonshire was one of the first aristocrats to contract the “orchid sickness” and became obsessed with them. His peers followed soon and having a good orchid collection became the hallmark of the rich and privileged. Orchids remained rare and expensive because of the difficulty to grow them, propagating them needed to replicate exactly the conditions of their natural habitat. Shortly after World War One a scientist called Dr. Lewis Knudson discovered that orchids had a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic fungi called mycorrhiza and orchids seeds needed them to germinate. This later opened the door to a more massed production. Later tissue culture methods allowed many species to be mass produced and this drove prices down to where the middle class people could now afford to have and grow orchids.
Please enjoy the video and photos provided in this post and take a short tour of the orchid show.
This is my amazing Canada!!!
