It’s amazing just how many people are intimidated by orchids – by the myths connected to their cultivation, and by the folk lore which surrounds them.  After all, orchids are just plants, albeit with exotic flowers, and not so easy to grow from seed. However, many other plants are just as difficult. Even orchids don’t find it easy to grow from seed which is precisely why they produce so much of it, for the fact of the matter is that only a tiny percentage of the seed actually survives and grows.

The orchid craze started in the 18th century.  Collectors employed or sponsored by the landed aristocracy in Europe went all over the world gathering up a whole range of plants as well as orchids.  The orchids collected were never brought into Europe in vast quantities, because that is not how they are found in nature. No one knew how to grow them, and the mystery and rarity arose from that.  The fact that any survived was a bit of an accident, and it was really only in the 20th century that our knowledge about them, and their environmental requirements developed fully. Nowadays the myths have pretty well all been exploded and suddenly orchids are not so difficult after all.

Orchids are divided into two main groups. Those that grow in the ground (which are called terrestrial), and those that do not and which are epiphytic. Ground orchids are usually from the temperate regions of the world where they need to go to rest in the ground because of the winter conditions.  Ground orchids found in the tropics tend to go to rest in dry seasons. Ground orchids get their water from the soil. They also get their anchorage from the soil.

Epiphytic orchids get their anchorage by rooting into small fissures in rocks or in the bark of the trees on which they grow and which gives them support, and they get their water supply from the rain which falls and from the air which surrounds them.  

Probably the most popular orchids include the Cattleya, Vanda, Oncidium,  Phalaenopsis,  Dendrobium, Cymbidium, Paphiopedilum, and Odontoglossum.  There are hundreds of hybrids which have been developed within these orchid groups and between them, and they are all natives of either tropical America or tropical Asia.  In fact most of the 20,000 species of orchids are found in the wetter tropics of both hemispheres.

Guyana has some very attractive native species itself such as the Brassia, which I have collected on the Amatoi plateau not too far from Kamerang, but on the whole the most exotic orchids, and the most developed orchid ‘factories’ are to be found in the Far East.   In the ‘developed’ world growers of orchids in pots or in open wooden orchid boxes have always favoured Osmunda fibre in which to grow them. This is obtained from the root system of the Osmunda fern. In Guyana one would generally resort to some other suitable fibrous material such as coconut fibre.  

Increasingly growers don’t grow orchids in containers at all (that is epiphytic orchids), but are tying them to wire frames or to trees or posts where they are perfectly happy and seem quite at home.  Until next week may your God go with you wherever you may go.