Cultivation and breeding, history and symbolism

From: Orchids: Plants of Extremes, Contrasts, and Superlatives by Dr. Karl Heinz Senghas, Paul Parey Scientific Publishers, Berlin and Hamburg 1993, translated by Jonathan Steffen

Nature and mankind: there is no antithesis here, and yet no unity, no harmony. Man as a part of creation is only one of the innumerable tips of the many-branched tree of life — albeit a highly influential one, and one capable of changing the face of the world. From the very beginning, man has had to come to terms with the natural world. At first, it simply provided him with food and shelter. Only later did he begin to turn it to his own purposes. It is the tragedy of man that he started to explore nature more closely and to apprehend its full complexity only at a time when his use of it had already turned into exploitation. For the past two hundred years, man has been investigating both the animate and the inanimate world, and, of the animate world, both its fauna and its flora. Originally plants were seen above all in terms of their usefulness to man; only much later did they come to he seen in other ways. The notion that plants can be providers of pleasure and edification, and the love of them as aesthetic objects, are relatively modern developments. Orchids occupy a special role here. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, these exotic blooms excited almost unparalleled amazement, admiration and veneration in the people who saw them for the first time when live specimens were brought one after another to Europe and displayed in England, Belgium and Germany. Driven on by the spirit of inquiry, explorers brought back to Europe not only animals and curiosities from the inanimate world, but also plants. As they had no experience in dealing with them, the losses involved were enormous. The only way to deal successfully with this plant — exotic symbol of an exotic world — was by the creation of an artificial environment in which it could be cultivated with the care and attention it required. Professional gardeners on the one hand and amateur enthusiasts on the other were instrumental in the creation of such man-made habitats.

In the completely different cultural world of East Asia, the relationship between orchid and man is of much longer standing. The first reports of orchid cultivation — which refer exclusively to species of the genus Cymbidium — date back as far as the Confucian Era (c. 500 B.C.).The Chinese word “lan”, which stands for beauty, elegance and nobility, was time and again equated with Cymbidium, and the oldest book in the world on the subject of orchids “Ching Chang Lan Pu” by Chao Shin-Kong, dating from 1233 —deals principally with this genus. In numerous Chinese words, the superlative is formed with “lan”. Lan-chang, for instance, means “orchid-script” in the sense of a peerlessly exquisite manuscript. Behind this concept lies the genus Cymbidium, numerous species of which are native to China.

Cultivation of Orchids
The process of acclimatisation which orchids brought back to Europe had to undergo was rendered extremely difficult by the entirely false notion that these plants had to he kept in hot, humid conditions during the course of the long journey from their native habitat. Millions of orchid plants died under these conditions before people realized that they were actually considerably hardier than had ever been assumed. The study and experience of decades came to show that there were basically three preconditions for their successful cultivation:

1. Sufficiently high temperature;
2. The provision of corresponding light or lighting conditions;
3. The awareness of the presence or absence of an annual rhythm of growth, and the observance of this rhythm, chiefly in terms of the provision of water.

There is one significant growing-factor absent from this list: the substrate. This is certainly of considerable importance in the cultivation of terrestrial orchids, but these are of relatively little significance here. A great deal of attention was originally paid to the composition of the substrate for epiphytic orchids. As supplies of certain materials diminished — of fern-root, for instance, (Polypodium, Osmunda), of sphagnum moss, and more recently of tree fern (Dicksonia, among others) and substitutes were sought elsewhere, it became apparent that the most important factor here is the physical make-up of the substrate, and that the provision of an essential minimum of mineral salts is actually quite independent of this. If the physical properties of the soil are correct and the necessary mineral salts are provided, and if the above-listed preconditions are fulfilled, then the orchid-grower has considerable freedom to adapt the growing conditions at his disposal to the requirements of the individual species he is cultivating. Within this framework, the be-all and end-all of successful orchid cultivation is the careful observation of the state of the plants all the year round.

The “Sandwich method”, developed by Gerd Seeger and first practised on a large scale in Heidelberg Botanical Gardens, has proved itself suitable for very many orchids, albeit not all. It is based on two ideas:

1. That the materials be cheap and easily obtainable;
2. That it be easy to make reliable observations of the roots as an indicator of the plant’s state of growth.

Depending on the size of the plants, take three to five pieces of bark with as rough a texture as possible and line them up parallel to one another. Bridge the intervening gaps with smaller and narrower pieces of bark. Loosely fill all the remaining cavities with coarse-fibred materials — white peat, for instance. The plant is placed on one of these sandwiches, either naked or else wrapped in moss (indigenous forest mosses!), and the whole thing is tied up with fine hemp. It is astonishing to observe how quickly and extensively the orchids put forth their roots in the loose-packed cavities prepared for them. They can thus be easily observed at all times. This method has another advantage: after the plant has been watered or sprayed, the horizontal part of the root is quickly dried off by means of a ventilator. The risk of over-watering the plant and thereby causing its roots to rot is thus reduced to a minimum.

Neither cultivated nor wild orchids are universally healthy. Like other living beings, orchids suffer from what one might term geriatric illnesses. In artificial environments, the best preventive treatment is provided by careful cultivation. The premature dying-off of roots is always the first indication that something is wrong with a plant. A distinction must be made here between harm caused by incorrect care and harm caused by infection. The latter kind of damage can he inflicted by bacteria, fungi, viruses or pests. The bite-marks or puncture-points made by pests can in their turn trigger off secondary infections, principally by fungi. Viral illnesses are particularly unappetizing, being hard to diagnose and all but impossible to combat …

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