How to Grow Native Orchids in Gardens Large and Small

the comprehensive guide to cultivating local species

Wilson Wall, Dave Morgan

• Publisher: Green Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780857844613
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Horticulture
• Index: Biological Sciences

A unique illustrated book about growing native orchids giving a step by step guide to every planting situation. From this book, you will learn how to cherish these remarkable flowers and help them flourish in their natural habitat: - Which species of orchids will work in their garden and what companion plants to grow next to them - How to grow orchids from seed or in a container - How to start an orchid meadow or how to add orchids into an orchard Preserving and promoting local ecosystems

PART ONE

UNDERSTANDING
ORCHIDS

Chapter 00

A love
affair with
ORCHIDS

Whether it is the shape of the flower, the colours or the rarity, orchids hold a fascination for us all. In Northern Europe these special plants are indicators of a healthy meadow, the flower standing proud in a splash of colour shouting “Look at me – I am an orchid!” We became enchanted by orchids, first by impressive tropical blooms and then by more subtle native flowers, once growers realised they were the same plant and that these apparently different flowers have a common shape, consistent across all orchid species, regardless of size or where they come from.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORCHID DISCOVERY

Although this book is about cultivation of native orchids in the garden, the broader history of these plants is fascinating and worth a short digression. It has involved explorers, fortunes, skullduggery, maps written in code and amazing stories of chance.

Orchid-growing in Britain started with the collection of the large and blowsy tropical types, which were brought back as botanical samples. Native orchids were regarded as common wild flowers and few people realized that they were botanically identical to the exotic orchids, only smaller.

Trade in tropical orchids started in the seventeenth century, when these beautiful flowers captured the imagination of the public. Great efforts were made to transport live plants, with limited success, and it was a long time before any serious attempt at growing them from seed was made.

By the nineteenth century, demand for imported orchids was immense, and attention turned to cultivation from seed. An entire capsule of thousands of seeds might produce only a single delicate seedling and as the seedlings suffered such high mortality (for reasons then unknown), it was impossible to grow orchids from seed reliably. The only source of new orchids was from the wild, and collecting for this lucrative market was big business, leading to problems of over-collecting. In A History of Gardening in England (1895), Alicia Amherst wrote that orchids were packed off in their thousands, leaving their native habitats bare. Collectors of Miltonia vexillaria in Brazil pillaged the area that they were searching so it had “become pretty well cleared”. In Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter (1891), Albert Millican wrote that ten thousand Curled Odontoglossums were collected by cutting down four thousand trees, the camps being moved on week by week as all the plants were taken from each area.

While hothouses in Europe began to be decorated with flowering tropical orchids, the forests from which they came were being ruined. This would continue until botanists learned how to grow orchids from seed.

Travellers’ tales

The fashion for tropical orchids in Britain started in 1732 with the Pine-pink Orchid (Bletia purpurea, Figs 0.1/0.1a), when Sir Charles Wager got one to flower at his home in Fulham, London. Known at the time by the synonym Bletia verecunda, it had been brought back from the Bahamas. Importation continued and accelerated as new species were discovered, and in 1760 the Stiff-flower Star Orchid appeared in England for the first time. The fact that these flowers were brought in from the wild was what made them so desirable, often being sold on the basis of their description alone without an accompanying sketch.

Collecting orchids became a routine part of trading activities for any ship travelling through the tropics, though this is sometimes overlooked in historical accounts due to other events taking place on the trade route. One such case is the expedition under the command of William Bligh and the ship HMS Bounty (Fig 0.2), mounted to take breadfruit from the tropical Pacific islands to the West Indies in order to start commercial production. This ended in failure in April 1789, when the infamous mutiny took place. However, the eminent naturalist Joseph Banks then organized another expedition, again with Bligh in charge. This returned successfully with breadfruit plants – but also with 15 orchids.

Some orchids were only discovered by chance, such as when a shipme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Understanding orchids
• Part 2: Cultivating orchids
• Part 3: Orchid communities
• Appendix: Plant lists
• Resources
• Index
• Also By Green Books
• Copyright