They mimic moths, slippers, stars and even dancing ladies, indeed anything they can to entice you into their world of enchantment.
“Orchids,” Mark Griffiths wrote in his eponymous book (Harry N. Abrams Inc.), “are niche marketers, protean opportunists that have evolved, are still evolving, to exploit the nuances and extremes of a multitude of habitats and to attract the pollinating insects that are found in them.”
That evolution is very much in evidence in The New York Botanical Garden’s 11th annual “Orchid Show” (through April 22), which transforms the Victorian glasshouse that is the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory into a rainforest festooned with the serial seducers. Francisca Coelho, the Garden’s Vivian and Edward Merrin vice president for glasshouses and exhibitions, has incorporated many of the trees felled there by Hurricane Sandy into the design.
Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.
For more, visit nybg.org. And check out WAG’s romp with nature in the April “Animal Magnetism” issue.
– Georgette Gouveia
