Missouri Botanical Garden Orchid Show 2007

voice: Dr. Peter H. Raven

Welcome to the Garden and to our fabulous “The Art of Orchids” show. I’m Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Our talented horticulture and design staff works hard every year to bring you this beautiful display of winter-blooming orchids and I think you will find this years’ display to be truly exceptional.

The new audio tour by cell provides even more opportunity to learn about this fascinating collection, as you enjoy their beauty first hand.

Let us know how you like the audio tour. There will be a prompt which will allow you to tell us your thoughts.

Thanks for visiting - and I hope to see YOU at the Garden again soon.

Voice: Pat Scace, exhibit designer

I’m Pat Scace, the exhibit designer in the Floral Display Department. Would you believe it takes a full year to plan and prepare for this orchid show?! After we choose a theme, my assistant and I work closely with a team of volunteers to design and build props in our workshop behind the floral display hall.

This year’s show presents the art of growing, illustrating and displaying the Garden’s extensive orchid collection. Among the hundreds of live specimens you will also see botanical prints from the Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Scenes in this classic conservatory were inspired in part by a still life watercolor painting.

Each plant is part of our permanent collection, including the 7 18-foot ficus trees that we incorporate into each of our shows. We display the orchids carefully to appear as they grow in nature, whether they’re attached to tree bark or grow low to the ground. We detail the pots with moss and bark for a more natural appearance. When the show ends, everything is dismantled and the plants are returned to the production greenhouse until next year.

If you’d like to see how it all comes together, check out the photos of the installation in progress on our Web site www.mobot.org.

Voice: Babs Wagner

I’m Babs Wagner, the horticulturist in charge of the Garden’s orchid collection. Behind the scenes in the greenhouse, we tend thousands of plants. For the orchid show, I display as many different kinds as I can, so you can see the amazing diversity of our collection.

The stars of this show are the winter bloomers. To get them ready on time, I juggle the greenhouse temperatures, starting in October. By doing this, I can force the flowers to bloom early or delay their bloom times a little. The variety of orchids you see here will change over six weeks. We start with about 800 orchids. I switch out approximately 50 to 100 as they start to fade each week and replace them with blooming plants from our greenhouses. First thing every morning, I slice off any faded flowers with a sharp razor blade, so everything always looks fresh and perfect.

Do you know that vanilla comes from an orchid vine? Our vanilla orchid collection is one of North America’s largest. Look for the Vanilla planifolia. This plant is 102 years old, from 1904! Vanilla is extracted from the fleshy seed pod, called a vanilla bean. It’s actually a fruit that ripens gradually and eventually turns black, filled with thousands of tiny seeds.

Voice: Jim Cocos, Vice President of Horticulture

Resource: Public Relations fact sheet

I’m Jim Cocos, Vice President of Horticulture. This Garden’s orchid collection is one of the largest and finest in the country. We grow more than 8,000 plants in our greenhouse area called the orchid range. These plants make up our largest living collection, representing over 2,500 unique species, varieties and hybrids. We grow a number of rare and unusual specimens. Some of them are over 100 years old. Many of the Cattleya hybrids in this show are no longer commercially available. They were created many years ago, and growers no longer produce them.

Our collection emphasizes the types of orchids that can survive St. Louis’s hot summers as well as those that are winter bloomers. Their diverse colors and forms are valuable for our displays and educational exhibits.

Voice: Andrew Colligan, archivist and historian

Resources: Public Relations fact sheet, Bulletin articles, Kemper Center handout

I’m Andrew Colligan, the Garden’s archivist and historian. The Missouri Botanical Garden has collected, grown and displayed orchids for more than a century. The first specimens were given as a gift to the Garden’s founder, Henry Shaw, in 1876. Mr. Shaw was especially fond of orchids. At his death in 1889, the Garden’s collection, though small at the time, was one of the country’s most complete. The collection grew steadily, and in 1918, the largest public display of orchids ever held in St. Louis made it’s debuted at a Christmas Show.

In 1923, George Pring, an orchidologist on the Garden staff, spent six months collecting plants in Panama and Colombia. He returned with eight tons of orchids, including 5,000 Cattleyas. The Garden held its first orchid show the following year, in 1924. Eight-thousand visitors came!

In 1926, the Garden set up a tropical field station in Panama and continued to collect orchids there. Meanwhile, back in St. Louis, industrial smoke and pollution threatened the orchids…so, they were moved 30 miles west to Gray Summit, to what is now the Shaw Nature Reserve, where special greenhouses were built for them. An orchid seedling department was started in 1927 and the collection continued to grow in size and prominence. By 1958, air quality in the city had improved and the orchids were returned to the Garden. They have remained here ever since.

Voice: Dr. Jim Solomon, curator of the herbarium

Resource: Talking Orchid script, Bulletin articles, 2005 <#38> 2006 Orchid Show brochures

Hi, I’m Dr. Jim Solomon, curator of the herbarium here at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Did you know that orchids are the largest family of flower plants in the world, with some 30 to 35,000 species? That’s approaching nearly 10 percent of all flowering plants!

They grow on every continent except Antarctica. While there are only about 200 orchid species in North America the tropical countries have many, many more. For example, there’s more than 3,500 species in Ecuador and more than 1,300 in Costa Rica.

Some orchid plants are less than an inch tall with flowers the size of a pinhead, while others grow up to 40 feet tall, with flowers approaching a foot in width.

Terrestrial orchids grow on the ground, where their roots absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil with the help of soil fungi. Epiphytic orchids on the other hand grow on tree trunks or branches for support and have no direct contact with the ground. They have adapted to grow where water and nutrients are limited, and a spongy covering on their roots helps them soaks up moisture.

Some orchids have roots that grow upwards, forming a basket to catch leaves and other debris that fall from the treetops.

Although many orchids are incredibly fragrant, not all of them smell nice! Some smell musty and others actually reek - of decay, or rotting meat, or even old tennis shoes. There’s a good reason for this – a strong scent attracts specific pollinators. And orchid are pollinated by a wide variety of different kinds of animals, bees, flies, moths, butterflies, wasps, birds and beetles all carry pollen from one flower to another. For orchids to make seeds, they must receive pollen from another orchid of the same species.

Their seeds are so small, as small as speck of dust, and weigh almost nothing, that they are easily picked up and blown about by the wind. That’s how they spread from one place to another.

Did you know that an orchid fruit can contain up to a million seeds?

Voice: Dr. Peter H. Raven, president

Resources: 2005 Orchid Island brochure

If you read the bestseller The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, then you not only would have been highly entertained but you would have learned that since Victorian times, passionate collectors have driven the search for the rarest of orchids.

It’s important to remember that individual orchid species which are often very rare are extremely vulnerable to simply being wiped out to be driven to extinction in nature.

Wild orchids are often over-collected. Many species are restricted to a specific habitat, such as the branches of a particular kind of tree and many of them with their bizarre and unusual and well adapted flowers depend on a particular kind of visiting animal or pollinator in order to be able to thrive, produce seeds and spread themselves.

Since 1975, the international plant trade has been regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. As president of the Garden, I want to say that this institution stands firmly behind these principles and is devoted to the conservation of plants and animals and to building up sustainable life systems that will support people throughout the world.

In all the areas where we work, in Latin America, in Africa, and in Asia, we strive to enable people through the knowledge of plants to take care of their own lives and to improve them accordingly.

All of the Garden’s plants have been acquired legally from growers and researchers.

Voice: Jenn Wolff, Exhibit and Information Coordinator

Hello, I’m Jennifer Wolff, Exhibit and Information Coordinator at the Garden. A portion of our orchid collection is always on display throughout the year.

Just inside the Beaumont Room under the atrium, you’ll find a beautiful selection of orchids in bloom. The Beaumont Room is located in the education wing just west of the ticket counter in the Ridgway Center.

Also, growing amidst the beauty of the rain forest, a stunning array of orchids can be found near the bamboo bridge just inside the Climatron conservatory.

The orchids in these display areas rotate regularly, so you might not see the same one on your next visit to the Garden.

During your visit, look for our interpretation cart inside the Ridgway Center, where both the young and young at heart can explore the world of orchids with a Volunteer Interpreter through hands-on, sensory-based materials and activities.

Voice: Bob Vander Linden, volunteer in the orchid range

Resources: Kemper Center fact sheets, Plant Doctor

I’m Bob Vander Linden, a Master Gardener volunteer in the orchid range. Here at the Garden, you can turn to a number of sources for plant care advice. Stop by the Kemper Center for Home Gardening, where you can use reference materials or ask for handouts on growing and caring for orchids.

Call the Horticultural Answering Service on weekday mornings to seek advice from master gardeners. At home, get online and check out the Web site www.gardeninghelp.org. The Garden also offer classes for both novice and experienced orchid gardeners.

Our Garden Gate Shop sells plants, orchid care products and lots of gardening books and accessories. Plant society shows and sales at the Garden offer another opportunity to buy orchids, ask questions, and get advice from knowledgeable members. The Orchid Society of St. Louis and the Missouri Orchid Society host shows and sales at the Garden each year in February, August and September.

Voice: Jan Simons, Vice President of Retail Operations

I’m Jan Simons, Vice President of Retail Operations. Stop by the Garden Gate Shop and check out our great selection of potted orchids, and everything you need to grow them. If you’re buying an orchid for the first time, try an easy-to-grow Phalaenopsis. It’s also known as the “moth orchid.” Our prices start as low as $6 for a small seedling. For about $40, you can buy a nice-sized plant in bloom. And remember, proceeds from your purchase support the Garden.

Our sales staff can also help you select the correct fertilizer, orchid bark, pots, stakes and tools. When you buy an orchid, you will receive written instructions for the proper plant care.