A day in Paradise :: The Orchid Show at The New York Botanical Garden

Yesterday I paid a visit to one of my favorite oases, The New York Botanical Gardens, where the Orchid Show is currently on display at the Enid A Haupt Conservatory, which in itself, if you have never been, is a splendor. This year's theme is Key West Contemporary where a they recreated the Jones and Eaton Garden with a green garden wall and a fountain flowing into a pool with stepping stones. At every angle, soaring angular pergolas and trellises are enveloped by thousands of brightly colored orchids.  The modern angular architectural lines of the garden leads visitors to lush displays of flowers, palms, and other plants, including the everglades palm, Bismarck palm, area palm, bottlebrush, variegated mahoe, buttonwood, gumbo limbo, spineless century plant, and Christmas palm. Ferns and bromeliads comprise the beautiful understory of the exhibition. To stroll through these incredible displays is to take a stroll through paradise.

A Few Facts About Orchids 

Orchids represent the height of evolutionary success in the plant kingdom. With more than 30,000 naturally occurring species, they are the largest family of flowering plants. Orchids are adaptable, diverse, and grow in almost every habitat—from semi-desert to Arctic tundra—on every continent except Antarctica. They come in a dazzling range of sizes, from miniatures with tiny flowers less than 1/16 of an inch in diameter to giants more than 25 feet tall with flower spikes up to 10 feet long. Orchids also come in an amazing array of colors and shapes. Some mimic bees, wasps, butterflies, and moths; others have unusual buckets, traps, and trigger mechanisms. These adaptations help ensure that insect pollinators visit the flowers. Because orchid flowers have specialized reproductive parts and their pollen is a single mass, individual grains of pollen cannot disperse as with other flowers. As a result, each orchid flower has only one chance to transfer pollen to another flower.

Orchids at the Garden 

There are more than 6,000 orchids representing 2,273 taxa (different types) in the Garden’s permanent collection. The New York Botanical Garden has orchids from all of the floristic regions of the world, including Australia, Africa, South America, and Madagascar. The Garden is committed to orchid research and conservation, its scientists study the botany and ecology of orchids; what they discover is useful to conservation work that will ensure the future of these extraordinary plants in nature.

 

I hope you enjoyed my brief visual tour and if you are in or near the New York area I highly encourage you to stop by! For more information on the show and the gardens, please visit their website.