Exploration & Observations of the Dazzling New York Botanical Garden Orchid Show
The Orchid Show at The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is
stunning.
It’s Breathtaking.
Words fall away…
So does the other world – the one where the lens is not
mesmerized by plant portraits.
There is really no need to add text to this post.
Silly to attempt to augment the stars of
the show?
But I’m a storyteller so you will forgive me for a few tidy
observations…
The annual Orchid Show just keeps getting better.
I worked at NYBG at the time the very first Orchid show was
conceived and launched to much fanfare.
But there was also that slightly malodorous whiff of hort disdain. Yes,
every genre has the taste-makers and buzz-builders: those influencers who seem
to set the pace.
It was said that the NYBG Orchid Show “merely” showed off an
abundance of candy-colored Moth Orchids – the now, rather ubiquitous
Phalaenopsis.
The insult being, “How Common.”
The idea that a large portion of the orchid display was made
up of orchids you could buy rather on the cheap from – a box store such as
Walmart - was just too much to bear, horticulturally-speaking.
The hort tribe - threw its garden-honed muscle and respect
behind that other orchid show – the
original one (this was rumored to have been displaced from the NYBG homestead
in the Bronx – But that’s another story.)
The New York International Orchid Show at Rockefeller Center
produced a very sophisticated and rather cerebral orchid show with lots of rare
and curious orchid species – more often than not grown by some of the country’s
major orchidists.
But all that said, Rockefeller Center was never the Enid A.
Haupt Conservatory.
The NYBG Orchid Show inside the New York City Landmark Glass
House is transporting.
The orchids seduce you from the moment you step inside and
shamelessly stare, transfixed at the magic of the orchids – dripping from trees
and arbors and rocks.
Their glamorous beauty resonates and reflects dimension from
the black pool centered in the entry foyer with a gentle plink, plink of the
fountain…
Like fireworks, the blooms grab your attention. And your heart.
The outside world melts into memory, and you give yourself
over to the world of orchids.
You can’t get enough.
You want to know where they come from. How do they grow?
The orchid collection is brilliantly curated, too.
I meant to take a quick peek at the orchids as I was at the
Garden for a lecture and wanted to just stop by and take a few pictures before
I headed over to the Shop and sign a few of my Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown
Cookbooks there.
After all, I had seen
the show every year. What hadn’t I seen
before?
But honestly, I couldn't resist the orchids. They beckoned me to walk among them.
NYBG writes: This year The Orchid Show is designed by Francisca P. Coelho, Vivian and Edward
Merrin Vice President for Glasshouses and Exhibitions at the Garden. Coelho is
best known for her plantsmanship and key role in the design and development of
high-profile shows in the Conservatory.
I
downloaded the NYBG app for my iPhone (after deleting a lot of video and photos
to accommodate the space!) and felt smug about my cool Hort capabilities.
Curiously,
there is no Orchid Show on the App! How
can this be? NYBG notes, “This is the largest exhibition of its kind in the
United States.”
Well,
one can’t stay too steamed with all that beauty and the orchids just whispering
to you to come hither.
So, I
used the coded numbers to call on my phone and listened to either Coelho or
NYBG president Gregory Long provide the docent talk, a la the Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s classic Phillippe de Montebello’s hand-held, guided tour.
Looking
at my notes, I see I scribbled some salient take aways:
- There are 30,000 naturally occurring orchid species
- Tens of thousands are horticulturally created hybrids
- Orchids are one of the largest and most diverse families of flowering plants, growing in almost every habitat
- Orchids have myriad shapes and forms
I have
always been particularly drawn to the Vanilla Orchid (and I am writing a
children’s story about it, in fact – part lore and part fiction).
There is
a very nice display of this sweetie of an orchid.
I don’t
care for the too-garish Corsage orchid and so passed by these candy-colored
show offs.
On the other hand, the wispy flowers of the
oncidium Tsiku Margaurite looked like petticoats on the palm tree trunks.
While taking this photo, I overheard a bit of garden humor exchange: A visitor asked the gardener how he keeps it all so green, the hort expert
joked, “We use green spray paint!”
The
Pacific Paradise was so feathery – they looked like ballet dancers leaping or
jete-ing.
The
butterfly orchid – said to have launched “Orchidmania” in England in the 19th
Century“ consists of “only four species” and grows on the trunks of West Indian
and Costa Rican tree trunks. What love…
The Orchid Show meanders through the entire Glass House but
the show-stoppers are held for the finale.
The exuberant displays dazzle the eyes upon entering this
Wizard of Oz-like transformation to unbridled brilliance.
It’s a soft fireworks display: Look here. No there.
The ambiance created is a sensual assault of color, abetted
by the sound of soft Caribbean style Latin music and the soothing tinkle of
water from the fountains and limpid pools, along with the steamy, hanging,
dripping moss necklaces and terrestrial woodlands.
There you will find rare Lady Slipper orchids. Exotic Bromeliads arch like trained athletes
poised.
You will delight in learning how smart, clever orchids save
water when rain is scarce.
Or how the
Dancing Lady Orchid borrows from other orchids…
There are the diminutive ground dwellers – like tiny jewels
- that tempt you to look down and bend in for a more intimate conversation.
That yellow, sweet sugar is reason alone.
The scented orchids were always a heartthrob for me. I had
chocolate and coconut scented orchids and my husband would say it was like
sitting with an Almond Joy!
The Oncidiums in the show line part of an orchid allee. The Sharry
Baby Heaven Scent oncidiums are redolent.
Much has been written about the most rare orchid, Angraecum
sesquipedale, Darwin’s Star Orchid. It
is the stuff of legend.
Here, NYBG tells it:
The story goes that Darwin was
sent a sample of the flower in 1862. Upon seeing its long, narrow, nectar tube,
he predicted that there must be an insect with a very long proboscis (a
tongue-like part) that could reach deep within the hollow space to “drink” the
nectar at the bottom. In so doing the insect would bump into the flower’s
sticky pollen, enabling its transfer from one flower to another.
But no such insect had ever been
seen in Madagascar where the orchid came from, or anywhere else. And many scientists
believed Darwin was wildly wrong, so he was ridiculed for his prediction.
Nonetheless, Darwin firmly
believed that the star orchid had developed its long nectar tube as an
adaptation to help ensure pollination because orchid flowers have their pollen
in a single mass and cannot disperse it as other flowers do. The orchids need
their specific insect pollinators to survive.
Sure enough, about four decades
after Darwin’s prediction, an insect with the exact physical characteristics
that Darwin had predicted was discovered. Called the Hawk Moth, its scientific
name is Xanthopan morganii praedicta,
which is Latin for ‘predicted moth’ in honor of Darwin. (Watch a nighttime video showing the moth
interacting with the orchid.)
The happy, pansy-face orchids bid you farewell near the
exit.
The Orchid Show runs through April 22. Don’t miss it. If you’ve seen it once – go
again.
Do you grow orchids? If you do, what is your favorite? If not, try it. Orchids are easy and most rewarding to grow. I've often said that orchids are like the jewelry of the plant world.
How glamorous!
