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"The Orchid Show: Singapore", the 17th annual Orchid Festival of the New York Botanical Garden, which runs until April 28, showcases the natural species and hybrid sensations of Asia's Southeast – more than 70% of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory exhibition. Thousands of them, in hundreds of varieties and all shapes, sizes and colors imaginable – and inconceivable.
The orchid, which was once an aristocratic rarity, is now a ubiquity – you can buy them at Home Depot – remains the most abnormal flower in the natural world, dizzying in its opulent and unyielding opulence. And this is only a case apart.
"It has surpbaded poinsettia as the horticultural crop in the world," said Marc Hachadourian, chief curator of orchids at the New York Botanical Garden. "These are the pandas of the plant world – they are charismatic, colorful, engaging."
The botanical garden partners at the show are the Singapore Botanical Gardens, whose National Orchid Garden has the largest collection in the world, and the Singapore Bay Gardens, a green-themed entertainment attraction where the final of the wedding party in "Crazy Rich Asians" was filmed. . Singapore, formerly known as a "garden city", is now called "a city in a garden". This orchid, mbad produced and vigorously hybridized as a major export industry, is its national flower.
Recently, during a walk in the conservatory, it was hard not to think of Hachadourian as a wizard, thus exploring his kingdom of perfect riches and unimaginable. "Vanda, Dendrobium, Cymbidium, Phalaenopsis and Paphiopedilum", he said, Linnaeus' botanical Latin rolling his tongue as skillfully as the daily specials, pointing to jewel-like faces on the right and left. It was a strangely extraordinary experience, as if all that was ordinary had been Photoshopping: an Instagram emerald city, with a kind of Pokémon at the ghost plant in play.
The ambbadador of the new ubiquity of the orchid is the Phalaenopsis, in white Calvin Klein-underwear. Known as the grocery orchid, it is widely available at lower cost and is the star of the lifestyle, from advertising for luxury condos to spas and wellness supermarkets. . The cattleya is crowned with the throne: the grandmother's ruffled orchid that forms the stuff of the corsages. Proust has one on his label in the famous portrait of Jacques-Emile Blanche in 1892.
Because of the clean, modern, and broad-shouldered success of the Phalaenopsis, everyone is now trying out orchids, losing the fears of home gardeners, as orchids lose their stigma as plants that are difficult to grow.
"I have a slipper and a Phalaenopsis," said Dr. Michelle Montenegro, visiting the conservatory with a colleague, Dr. Alec Petrie. Both are emergency physicians at the Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Montenegro had its orchids at the show last year. "They are really alive," she said with a surprised laugh when asked about their health. She built them a special shelf. "The shelf really helps," she added.
"I've killed a lot of plants," said Petrie, to whom Montenegro was trying to make an orchid speak. "I'm better with people -"
She smiled. "I tell you today," said Montenegro. The next step was the garden book and gift shop.
The garden show in Singapore has two main attractions. A pair of Supertrees – 18-foot high steel frames in the trunk and canopy shape of trees – are versions of the Artificial Supertrees in a vast grove of Gardens by the Bay, which is the backdrop for the scene in "Crazy Asian rich. "
The Singapore Supertrees are over 160 meters high and the skyways cross the peaks. They are also integrated with photovoltaic cells, which collect energy – like living trees – that feed the choreographed nocturnal displays into music. And they are wrapped, head to toe, in alien foliage.
"It's a kind of Disneyland for plant lovers," said Karen Daubmann, Assistant Vice President of Exhibitions, who visited Gardens by the Bay and worked on replicating the Bronx super trees. "The orchids that we present indoors, at the conservatory, are things they grow outdoors. It's pretty wild. "
Like those in Singapore, the trees in the garden have been designed to represent a particularly spectacular clbad of specimens, even in the tropics: epiphytes or plants that grow without soil on trees.
"It's a strange community that has basically evolved to climb trees to get the best light, water and moisture available," Hachadourian said. Alpha types of orchid; the acrobats of the vegetable kingdom.
George Poinar Jr., Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University, was the lead author of a 2017 study that established the age of orchids between 45 and 55 million, 25 million more than previously thought. He told a science journal: "We probably should not say that about a plant, but orchids are very smart."
The other major attraction of the show, inspired by the Singapore National Orchid Garden, is an arcade walk filled with orchids leading to the conservatory's main dome. The colors cover a spectrum ranging from yellow – Onchidium "Goldiana" or "dancer" orchid – to pink and shades darker and warmer. It's like walking under a rainbow.
"The Vandaceous Alliance" is a distinctive orchid group very specific to Singapore, "said Hachadourian about their particularly important presence in the show. The national flower of Singapore, the Vanda "Miss Joaquim", takes its name from the woman who raised it in the nineteenth century: one of the first hybrids produced artificially and still in cultivation today.
In the tradition of honoring people with their own cultivars (there are for example orchids of the first lady of "Mrs. Herbert Hoover" to the "Rhyncholaeliocattleya" tinged with fuchsia "Melania Trump"), the Botanical Garden of New York unveiled the Vanda "Awkwafina," said Daubmann, celebrating the actress who starred in "Crazy Rich Asians." Awkwafina grew up in Queens and remembered being taken to the garden for her fourth birthday.
The orchid – its know-how and collection – is no longer the exclusive domain of retired people, academics or well-meaning fanatics you could have imagined.
"Half of my room is dedicated to my plants," said Sebastian Trujillo, 18, a visitor services worker in the garden. "About 415 plants. It's a jungle there. Trujillo is a high school student who lives with his parents in Queens. "Now they help me build a greenhouse at the back of the house."
With its popularity, does the orchid – one of the most enduring incarnations of the idea of scarcity – run the risk, as any celebrity, of overexposure? If we see too much, will we lose the point?
"I asked him what he thought was orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were forced to steal them," Susan Orlean writes. in his best-selling book The Thur Thief, 1998, best-seller, Florida.
"Oh, mystery, beauty, unknowable, I guess," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "
With about 30,000 wild species around the world and hundreds of thousands of breeder hybrids, the number of elevators is fast, flowering is not over yet.
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Event Information:
"The Orchid Show: Singapore"
Until April 28 at the New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx; 718-817-8700, nybg.org. The garden also hosts orchid parties every weekend of the race.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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