Hot pink, sunlit yellow and snow white are just some of the brilliantly colored orchids on display at The New York Botanical Garden in The Bronx.
The garden debuted its annual winter show called “The Orchid Show: Chandeliers” for the media yesterday.
Offering a respite from New York’s cold, snowy, gray winter weather, the indoor display features thousands of orchids inside the glasshouse of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
“This is the 13th annual orchid exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden. It’s called ‘The Orchid Show: Chandeliers.’ And this year we wanted to look at orchids a little bit differently. So we are asking people to look up and there are a hundred chandeliers throughout the exhibition. Really large chandeliers that are about 16 feet (4.9 meters) wide and then lots of all different kinds of hanging baskets and balls and columns and things like that,” explained Karen Daubmann, the Associate Vice President for Exhibitions.
Visitors to the exhibit will experience living art as they view the delicate orchid petals and ornate design displays.
“They are colorful, they’re fragrant, and they’re exotic. And people come here and they just meander for hours and enjoy the beauty of the orchids. It’s a nice break in the middle of a dreary winter,” added Daubmann.
Many of the orchids come from extensive orchid collection of the New York Botanical Garden.
“We grow a lot of these plants here and they are actually one of the most cultivated florist crops in the world now. But the orchid family itself is actually the largest flowering plant family with over 30,000 naturally occurring species and now probably close to about 150,000 man-made hybrids. They are found in every continent of the world, except Antarctica, in jungles, in deserts, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of Tierra Del Fuego. One of the most surprising things that people learn about orchids is not only how diverse they are, but the fact that they are found almost everywhere that plants grow,” said orchid expert Marc Hachadourian.
Floating in the air and growing from the ground, “hundreds of different varieties on display,” said Hachadourian.
“As some flowers fade, they will be replaced by other plants that are coming along in our greenhouses. At any one time, there are thousands of orchids in bloom and hundreds of different varieties to see here at the New York Botanical Garden,” he added.
“The Orchid Show: Chandeliers” opens to the public at the New York Botanical Garden on February 28 and will remain on display until April 19, 2015.
(Reuters)