Lloyd Jones is an Assistant Gardener in NYBG’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Vanilla planifolia
Within the Lowland Rain Forest house of the NYBG’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory exists the only orchid genus from which a culinary product is derived. Native to the tropical Americas, it is widely cultivated in tropical climates throughout the world. Vanilla planifolia is an orchid of unusual orchid characteristics, but provides a popular, gratifying flavor. The opposite and alternate foliage is flat, thus the specific epithet “planifolia.” It is classified as an epiphytic/terrestrial tropical vine with aerial roots for support and to collect nutrients and water. This plant thrives in moist, humid, and warm conditions with filtered light. The name vanilla comes from the Spanish word vainilla, meaning small pod.
This year I have personally counted 13 clusters of flower buds, which are now unfolding one bud per cluster, per day. The flower color ranges from light green to pale yellow, and, because the native pollinator is not present outside the orchid’s native range, it must be hand pollinated during the morning of the first 24 hours when they flowers are receptive. For both educational and collections purposes, we plan on hand pollinating the flowers as they successively open. If pollination is successful, we expect to see the familiar vanilla pods forming over the next few months. Come visit and witness the origin of one the world’s favorite flavors!
Darwin’s orchid is one of the most reputable flowers you’ll find in the Haupt Conservatory during The Orchid Show, if only for its incredible importance to its namesake’s evolutionary predictions.
Darwin’s orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale) in the Haupt Conservatory – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
It’s never too early in the year for orchids—this might even be the perfect time to start admiring them, with our annual Orchid Show coming in February.
Ed. Note: In art, as in life, the orchid has enjoyed many decades of popularity throughout the world. But some might be surprised to find that these “exotic” flowers were en vogue with the horticultural set well before the 20th century made their cultivation rote. Even in the 1800s—and as far back as Charles Darwin’s investigation of his eponymous star orchid—there was a fervent interest in these elegant blooms.
Andrew Tschinkel, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Digital Imaging Technician, gives us a glimpse into the orchid’s illustrated past.
Mertz Digital, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s online collection, has just added several vintage nursery catalogs from the firm of Lager & Hurrell. The firm of Lager & Hurrell was established in 1896 in Summit, New Jersey and was, for decades, the largest commercial producer and distributor of orchid plants in the Americas.
John E. Lager (1861–1937), who founded Lager & Hurrell in 1896, was a legendary orchid hunter whose exploits took him to the most remote jungles of the world in a life long quest for extraordinary and beautiful orchid specimens. He was the subject of a 1933 TIME magazine profile for discovering a specimen that the writer described as “the world’s rarest orchid,” the pure white Cattleya Gigas Alba, sold by Lager & Hurrell to the Baron Firmen Lambeau of Belgium for the then astronomical price of $10,000! [Potentially $180,000 by modern estimates.]
The Orchid Show: Key West Contemporary is off and running as of this morning. Here’s some strawberry daiquiri visuals to get you in the tropical spirit. Oh, and happy March!
Up and up, The Orchid Show is coming together in the final stretch. And a good thing, too, since it starts on Saturday! Check out the second of our “Making Of” videos to get an idea of how things are playing out in the Conservatory.
I’m resigning myself, happily, to the flood of orchid photos we’ll be seeing from Ivo over the next couple of months. Everything from the boisterous moth orchids you know so well to elegant jewelry like this, an epiphytic orchid that grows on mossy trees in the Philippines.
Dendrochilum cobbianum – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
