Central Virginia Organic Gardener: Orchid Show at the Smithsonian: Field Trip Report

Monday, February 16, 2009

Orchid Show at the Smithsonian: Field Trip Report

Orchids Through Darwin’s Eyes, 15th Annual Orchid Show at the Smithsonian (Natural History)

We visited the 15th annual Orchid Show at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, on, appropriately, Valentine’s Day 2009 and the day after. This is the 5th time we’ve seen the orchid show in its 15 year history. It is a joint program with the US Botanic Garden. Every time I first see orchids I am struck with the same thought, that it is a sublime experience to stand in the face of so much natural beauty. I forget everything else, at least for awhile. I think I am always looking for those “Zen” moments in life when I feel calm and at peace, and being with beautiful plants gives me this experience (as long as I don’t mess it up by focusing too much on taking photographs instead of experiencing the plants). I get this feeling often in the garden, when I am digging or planting or weeding, just being in the garden, doing and observing.
The theme of this year’s orchid show is Charles Darwin and Orchids. As many of my friends know, I am an admirer of Darwin and all the work he did to understand the natural world, not just his work regarding his theory of descent with modification via the mechanism of natural selection (which we call evolution, but he rarely did). Whether you accept evolution or not, it is the seminal theory in the biological sciences, unifying a wide range of ever-increasing scientific observations into a coherent whole (that is the definition of theory, not the commonly accepted notion that “a theory is just a guess.”) Well, off my soapbox. I don’t want to turn off any fellow gardeners who disagree.

According to the Smithsonian web site “Charles Darwin used orchids to help prove his theories of natural selection and evolution. Scientists today follow in Darwin’s footsteps and use orchids to learn more about how plants have evolved and adapted to live in almost every type of environment around the world.” Darwin established how different orchids use their varying and unusual flower structures to attract different, mostly insect, pollinators. Some mimic the female of the insect species, others mimic nectar-bearing flowers of other flowering plants. Orchids are the master tricksters of the flower world- and lucky for us! It has lead to great variation and beauty. By the way, the orchid is the most common type of plant in the word, at 25,000 species. (though many are endangered by habitat destruction) and exists on every continent except Antarctica (in Virginia, the most-commonly known orchid is the pink lady slipper, a terrestrial or ground-dwelling orchid [as opposed to epiphytic, “air dwelling” or tree-dwelling orchids]).

Orchids are identifiable by their structure. They generally have three sepals and 3 petals. The three sepals are usually the same shape and are the least significant of the petal-like parts of the flowers. The three petals are more interesting. Two on the top of the flower are generally similar to each other, but the third petal is what makes the unusual “look” of the flower. It is the part that is uniquely shaped, often with an overhanging lip on top. It is often striped or variegated in the center, acting like “runway lights” guiding the incoming flying insect.

About the photos I took at the orchid exhibit and the United Sates Botanical Garden (USBG). The lighting at the orchid show was dim and the exhibit fabricators used some colored spot lights, which made taking photos with my camera a challenge. The orchids in the USBG were much better lighted, it being partly sunny day at the conservatory, so some of the photos will be from there.
Oh, this is not an entry on orchid care, just my field trip report. I have owned precisely three orchids and killed all three, though I did get one to rebloom before its demise. I sense there will be another orchid in my future, however. It will be a phalaenopsis (“moth”) orchid, supposedly the easiest to care for, the most adaptable to the home environment and the most readily available. It may not survive long term, but it will provide a few months of bloom…and perhaps peace.