Flower orchid

At the height of the Victorian frenzy for orchid collecting,

an ostentatious display of the rarest, most valuable specimens was a mark of social cachet. No grand establishment was complete without an orchid greenhouse, and rival nurseries competed to send plant-hunters round the world to seek out fresh novelties.

Many of these explorers, trekking through the uncharted jungles of South America and Asia for the hunt of orchid, came to sticky ends in the service of "orchidelirium", as the passion for orchids was known.

The sheer extravagance of orchid culture on this scale meant that the fever had burnt itself out by the First World War. Collections fell into decline, greenhouses fell into disrepair. These days, rare specimens can still fetch high prices. 

Poachers of wild orchid plants can still find themselves in trouble, though more probably from customs officials and environmentalists than wild animals or unfriendly natives. But this rarefied end of the market is a far cry from the

But even his impressive orchid conservatory would pale beside the 36,000sq metres of Lennard van der Weijden's greenhouses in Amsterdam. They are so vast that the staff whiz round them on bicycles. When the benches reserved for orchids just coming into flower are full, you can see up to 60,000 plants all blooming away at once. This mass of pink, white, cream and yellow is an impressive sight.

Van der Weijden's grandfather started the orchid nursery in 1948, but it was Lennard's father Jacques who began specializing solely in orchids, 30 years ago. Now the van der Weijdens' main line is the Phalaenopsis,

The serried ranks of flower orchids in the van der Weijden greenhouses come in all the colors and sizes possible for Phalaenopsis. But the trays waiting to be shipped off for sale contain individual plants that look eerily identical: same size, same patterning, same number of blooms per stem.

They are flower orchid clones. These days you don't have to clamber into the jungle canopy and risk life and limb to

gather specimens. Nor do you have to painstakingly nurture the plants along from seed. You simply ring the lab and place your order.

"We buy over half of our orchid stock from laboratory, a little from Belgium and some from Germany," explains van der Weijden.

At the orchid lab they take a clump of cells and put them in a nutrient- rich medium.

They can cut the orchid clump and then cut it again, so you can get a few thousand plants from one cell, all the same height, the same pattern, the same flowering period.

There's no season to orchid cloning, so a plentiful supply of lab-hatched orchids can be on sale for key orchid flower-buying dates such as Mother's Day, Easter and Christmas, plus all points in between.
 

The Victorian orchid growers would have marvelled at this high-tech process. The van der Weijdens' baby plants spend the first two years of their lives in flasks at the lab. After that, they are big enough to be transplanted into trays of bark, and specialized greenhouses nurture them until they are three years old and big enough to pot.

Growing orchids in bark allows plenty of air to reach their roots. "Almost every orchid is an epiphyte, so their roots would be stuck to the trunk of a tree, which is why they need air," explains van der Weijden. "Another company buys the plants and pots them for us, then we grow them on until they are big enough to flower - about another 30 weeks."

At the moment pink orchid are in fashion.

The van der Weijdens' premises are arranged with every mod con to keep an orchid comfortable.

Van der Weijden's own favorite orchid is the delicate Vanda Orchid. Even turning out tens of thousands of plants a week as he does, he says that orchid growing is not just a job; that there is an element of love in what might seem like a wholly business-like relationship. When Lennard's father drove me back to the airport, we made a detour via his house, to see where he started his business in what is now the garage. The living-rooms and windows are festooned with orchids, great swathes of blooms. He doesn't get sick of orchids, working with them every day? No, he loves them too.

Loved or not, orchids are big business. The world orchid retail value is about pounds 7bn, and large-scale Dutch growers have cornered the European market. The van der Weijdens sell a Phalaenopsis for around EUR6 to EUR8 (pounds 4 to pounds 5.50); it will eventually retail at around EUR15 (pounds 10). A "Vanda" sells for EUR15 wholesale and fetches around EUR50 (pounds 35) in a shop. British orchid growers can't achieve the Dutch-style economies of 

scale that would allow them to match these prices. Some even buy blooms from Holland to sell on. "We can't compete, so though we grow a few Phalaenopsis, we buy in most of what we need from Europe," says Liz Johnson, owner of McBean's Orchids, a nursery near Lewes in East Sussex.

couldn't let the plants and history go," she says. "There are so few of the old nurseries left."

Johnson grows rare orchid varieties, and specializes in types that don't clone readily and have to be coaxed from seed. One of her greenhouses is full of Odontoglossum, which has delicately frilled, beautifully marked blossoms.

Odontoglossum can only rarely be cloned, because the plant's own tissues produce toxins that are fatal to the new plantlets. "You won't see a houseful anywhere else in Europe," she says proudly.

McBean's, which is one of only two orchid nurseries to have exhibited at every Chelsea Flower Show since the first in 1912, is most famous for its Cymbidiums, which produce graceful sprays of as many as 20 long-living blooms at a time.

Johnson and her team grow Cymbidiums from seed, and then select the best specimens for cloning, in the on-site laboratory.

The `Phalaenopsis' orchids currently flooding the market often leave something to be desired in terms of quality, says Johnson. "If you count the buds on the spikes, many of the plants sold in mass outlets only have five orchid flowers.

The best orchid quality is nine-plus." And, she says, when buyers are conditioned to the hardy, long-lasting Phalaenopsis, whose flowers last for months and which will speedily flower again, they get upset when a more expensive type only blooms for a few

weeks. "They say, `But it's an orchid!' when the flowers die on their Paphiopedilum," she sighs.

In general, though, she welcomes the current upsurge in buy orchid. "Orchid buyers divide into hobbyists and pot-plant people, and why shouldn't the pot-plant people have more choice? It's a good idea for them to learn more about orchids." Many shop-bought orchids, though, suffer a swift death due to lack of care, in particular over watering. "Lots of the high- street retailers sell them in pots with no drainage holes,

and a Phalaenopsis shouldn't sit in water. If you have a pot with no holes, you should water literally a spoonful at a time, and take it out of the container when it has finished flowering."Inside Johnson's lab, there are shelves of jars of green slime and jelly. These are seedling and cloned ` orchids at various stages of development. It takes a while for the green fuzz to grow into something recognizable as a mass of baby plants; there could be thousands in a single jar. It takes seeds up to seven years to reach a saleable size; the clones grow up rather faster. Each jar is labeled; the goo in "1294" will eventually be miniature Cymbidium, "Doris Dawson", a green albino variety, while "0256" is a batch of white hybrid Odontoglossums in the making.

At McBean's, there are tiny orchids such as the Sigmatostalix radicans that can barely be seen with the naked eye, and specimens such as the Stanhopea, which has massive perfumed blooms. Johnson is particularly passionate about Paphiopedilums - the slipper orchids, with their distinctive pouched flowers. While some are pretty little pink things, some look alien, even predatory; they are just on the beautiful side of grotesque.

It is around the weirder, rarer, specimens that orchid mythology has grown; tales of crazy millionaires and gun-toting smugglers, of thievings and shootings and violence, of people for whom orchids have become a complete obsession. The film Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, had Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief at its core. Orchid Fever, by Eric Hansen, is another orchid-based bestseller. There can't be many other plant-centered non-fiction films or books that have critics falling over themselves to praise the excitement of the tale.

Today orchid enthusiasts and other can get the their flowers from the orchid nursery.. Hansen spoke to a Japanese property developer called Hiroshi Ikarashi, whose home was devastated in the 1994 Kobe earthquake. Ikarashi rushed naked from the wreckage of his house to check on his orchid greenhouse.

"Thanks to God," he told Hansen, "the greenhouse all broken, but plants only knocked on their side. I tell you, I am astonish. But then I begin to wonder: where my wife in the rubble of our house?"

Just before Christmas 2000, two young orchid hunters, Tom Hart Dyke and Paul Winder, then aged 24 and 29, were freed after being held for nine months by rebels in Colombia. Hart Dyke, known as the Indiana Jones of the orchid world, became hooked on orchids while at primary school, and has searched for specimens in Thailand, Sumatra, Japan, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and Belize. Interviewed shortly after his release, he said: "I guess you could say it was an orchid too far. I thought we were going to die but it was worth it. When you see orchids flowering they are extraordinary. Seeing something like a slipper orchid bloom can make you feel faint."

Anthurium Elegant spears of anthurium were the perfect accessory for the minimalist 1990s interior. No messy petals or untidy bits, and its waxy spikes made an architectural statement. Think one white anthurium, black stone vase. For the more dramatic, a single Strelitzia made a similar "I'm so chic" point, but in violent technicolour.

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