ORCHID SPECIES PRESERVATION PROGRAM: Conservation through Cultivation

OrchidMania's Permanent Collection Helps Ensure A Future
for At-Risk Orchid Species

While OrchidMania's primary objective is to raise money for grassroots AIDS organizations with our sales of donated orchid plants, we are also extremely concerned about preservation of endangered orchid species around the world. Over the years we have slowly established a modest collection of really special species held back from plant donations we have received.

Early in 1996, Douglas Thompson, OrchidMania's founder and past President, donated his entire collection of plants to OrchidMania's permanent collection, including almost 1000 unusual species (If you don't know the difference between species and hybrids: read this).

In June 1996, OrchidMania received a generous grant from IBM to expand our permanent collection of rare and endangered species. Joe Dougherty and Eric Hunt have been working for several years to photograph the plants in the permanent collection when they bloom, and Joe is now creating a series of webpages to catalog the plants in OrchidMania's Conservation Collection. Eric offers many of these species for viewing on his website.

Plants in our permanent collection (also known as our "red tag collection") usually remain there perpetually. Occasionally, if we deem there is an opportunity to improve the overall survivability of the species, plants are donated to other conservation programs, such as public botanical gardens or university research programs in need of additional breeding stock. Divisions and progeny are also made available for sale or trade to proven skillful growers, in order to improve dissemination (and thus minimize the potential for disaster-related losses) of rare species. Whenever possible we use modern artificial propagation methods to produce quantities of endangered plants, thereby helping to ensure their survival in private and public collections.

Hundreds (maybe even thousands) of orchid species disappear every year as natural habitats around the world are slashed and burned in the name of "progress" and development. CITES, an international treaty which restricts world trafficking in endangered animals and plants, also strictly controls orchids. Among orchid preservationists and conscientious environmentalists, CITES is a mixed blessing and often a source of disagreement. While the CITES treaty has helped to save the rhino and the elephant, CITES restrictions often make it difficult to save endangered orchid species which would otherwise find their way into public botanical gardens and private collections.

Said one grower we know, "I'd rather give an endangered species a fighting chance in my greenhouse than see it smouldering on a heap of tree trunks in a freshly bulldozed forest." As you might imagine, CITES and endangered species are a highly volatile subject for some orchid people. Although a significant worldwide black market exists for some orchid species, all plants in OrchidMania's conservation collection have been obtained legally — most are from nursery stock donated by our fantastic donors.

You can help improve orchid conservation, too, by donating divisions of rare species to OrchidMania. And you'll get a tax write-off, to boot. You can specify that you want your donation to enter our permanent collection. Contact us for details.

Species vs. Hybrids: To orchid people "species" means an orchid is not a hybrid; in other words, it is an orchid plant which exists or existed in the wild. Hybrids are created by breeding two separate species to obtain a new kind of plant that shares traits from both the parent species. Primary hybrids are created by breeding two species together. Intergeneric hybrids result when a plant (species or hybrid) from one genus is bred to a plant (either species or hybrid) from another genus. Complex hybrids are created when both parent plants are hybrids.

Species orchids in collections today may have been taken from the wild or may have been propagated artificially in a nursery. Hybrids, on the other hand, are almost exclusively man-made and almost always come from nursery stock (I say almost because there are a few natural hybrids that do occur in the wild... for example, Cattleya x guatemalensis, once thought to be a distinct species, is now understood to be a naturally occuring hybrid between C. aurantiaca and C. skinneri).

Many experienced orchid growers prefer to cultivate species orchids exclusively. While some are extremely beautiful, many species have flowers which are unusual, bizarre, or (in some people's opinions) even downright ugly. But they are all beautiful in their own right... and are worth cultivating and protecting for future generations to enjoy...

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