I’ve often been asked about the many times I imported orchids back in the 1970′s.
Why import you ask? If you are already growing orchids, you undoubtedly feel a strong urge to experience for yourself every phase of their culture. Probably the plants you have bought so far have been grown by someone else, and you carried on from there. But the real fun of orchid growing is to handle plants from the wild. Their rough, weather-beaten leaves make a strange contrast to their smooth, cared-for, hand-grown cousins.
There was a practical appeal, too. We could buy jungle plants already potted and semi-established for around $6.00 apiece. Although they are not much less expensive this way than propagations of greenhouse grown species, you do get more vigorous plants for your money.
If you buy small numbers of unestablished (not yet potted) plants, they were around $3.00 to $4.00 per plant. And if you buy them by the case (40 or so untrimmed plants) they are still less, around $2.00 to $3.00 apiece. When you buy single plants you can select the size you want, but by the case you would get large and small sizes, from two or three bulbs to ten or twelve.
You took more of a chance on the kind of blooms jungle plants will give you than you do if you buy species from a grower who carefully selects his plants for propagation or who has bred them from choice plants. On the other hand, growers often cull their stock and offer for sale only the less desirable plants.
Usually the latter are priced fairly in comparison with plants that give better blooms, but they are still about as expensive as jungle plants. There is always the chance, also, that among jungle plants there will be some excellent blooms, even a rare chance that you may have a white one. And you are sure to have d wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, for even among the species there are no two exactly alike.
Learn from our expects – 100′s of plant topics – thousands of articles at Plant-Care.com:
Commentaires récents