The world would be a far better place if there was an orchid on every tree. With that in mind, I recently created a community on reddit for orchids on trees.
For those not familiar with reddit...it's a website where people can submit links and rate them up or down. It also makes it really easy to discuss each link. Reddit is an excellent resource for aggregating information.
I've already submitted a few of my favorite links. Please feel free to rate/discuss them and submit any other links that you feel are relevant to growing orchids on trees. As Linus's law states..."given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". In this case, given enough eyeballs, we'll find all the easter eggs.
I also created a community for epiphytes if anybody is interested.
In order for there to be an orchid on every tree...we need epiphytic orchids to be more cold/drought tolerant than they already are. The problem is...most of you really don't want to know how cold/drought tolerant your orchids really are.
But if you really enjoy seeing orchids on trees...if you'd love to walk around your neighborhood and see orchids blooming on your neighbor's trees...if you'd love for orchid seeds to germinate on your trees...then I highly recommend selecting your orchids for drought/cold tolerance.
If everybody replaces their less tolerant orchids with more tolerant orchids...then the rate at which orchids become more tolerant will greatly increase. This will greatly decrease the amount of time before orchids can be grown on trees in Canada.
If you live in say Chicago, selecting for tolerance doesn't mean right off the bat leaving all your orchids outside year around...it simply means trying to trade for the epiphytic orchids that you can leave outside the longest. Invariably there will be casualties...but you can mitigate the damage simply by ensuring that you don't keep all your eggs in one basket. If an orchid is large enough...divide it and experiment with a division. If the division is less tolerant than most of your collection...then trade the surviving divisions for orchids that are more tolerant than most of your collection.
If you live in an area that requires orchids to be more eurythermal...then trade with people who live in areas that require orchids to be less eurythermal.
With that in mind...I have a few extra divisions of Cleisostoma scolopendrifolium. According to the Baker culture sheets...it's one of the most eurythermal epiphytic orchids. It might even be more eurythermal than Epidendrum conopseum. Not only is C. scolopendrifolium very eurythermal...but it might be the smallest monopodial orchid. I've never seen a smaller one.
Let me know if anybody is interested in trading. Initially I was primarily interested in cold tolerant orchids...but it just doesn't get cold enough here to really weed out the less cold tolerant orchids. Out of the 100s of epiphytic species of orchids I grow outside year around...I only lost one species when it finally got down to at least 32F. So now I'm primarily interested in acquiring drought tolerant epiphytic orchids.
I'm looking forward to seeing which photos of outstanding orchids on trees are your favorites!
With respect to the "Race to Canada" page, there are already a few plants that grow epiphytically in Canada, mostly ferns.
ReplyDeleteDo you think there would be any value in getting a few flasks of N. Falcata, C. Scolopendrifolium, and E. Conopseum, and sticking them outside in the cold to see if any seedlings make it?
I'd imagine that, with shelter, quite a few could be grown in Victoria BC.
Evidently, according to nature, there aren't enough plants growing epiphytically in Canada, or California, or anywhere else for that matter. Here's a relevant entry... Nature Abhors A Vacuum.
DeleteI'm not sure about the climate of Victoria BC but one thing to consider about those three orchids is that they all get quite a bit of summer heat. So they might not have a problem with the cold in milder parts of the UK, for example, but I doubt that they would get enough summer heat to grow.
One really nice epiphyte that can grow outside year around in milder parts of the UK is Echeveria rosea. If you can succeed with this then that would mean that you could probably succeed with orchids that share the same type of habitat.