Peter,
I do appreciate you weighing in. Personally, I am happy it has bloomed again and that the public here in NY can have the opportunity to actually see this remarkable plant. As a botanic garden, education is a large part of our mission and we always really do our best to disseminate factual info, but the problem with any kind of media coverage of anything is that information can get skewed very easily and once it is "out there" it then becomes fact. Reporters and media folks have expertise at reaching out to the public not necessarily about orchids or any other subject for that matter. With the internet and our ability to Google anything, right and wrong information gets propagated easily and widely. The result is that the same articles, stories and statements get repeated so often, they must be true. I have seen the great specimen Grammatophyllums at the Singapore Botanic Garden and Mandai and the amazing efforts of the Parks Board to get this species back out into the daily landscape. For anyone who has not been there, Singapore has very successfully brought many of their native plants back into the focus and access of the community. G. speciosum is not rare there, but it is not a common greenhouse orchid in temperate climates-it gets too big. Until the last five years or so it was hard to find any commercial growers that even offered seedlings or plants for sale that those of us in the US were able to access. When I bought this plant ten years ago I was thrilled at the chance. As for the printed statement, "few people or institutions can afford to grow it", what I told the reporter is that it is uncommon in cultivation here because few people or institutions can afford to give it the space that it requires. In the grand scheme of things it is fun to be able to introduce NY city dwellers to this amazing orchid species when hybrid Phals are their reference; as well as the idea that an orchid can compel masses of people to come out to a botanic garden to see it. For that, I am willing to put up with a little annoying...inaccuracy. Cheers, Dave Horak Message: 1 Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:44:49 +0800 From: "Peter O'Byrne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [OGD] Grammatophyllum story To: orchids@orchidguide.com Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 The New York Times article that Viateur posted in OGD V10 #277: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/a-200-pound-orchid-blooms-a gain/?hp has a couple of errors. i) It isn't rare in nature. In many places it is really common. ii) "it grows in the crotches of trees more than 100 feet in the air". Those trees must be absolutely massive ! Large established plants of Grammatophyllum speciosum are usually found growing in the crotches of trees at the normal height for tree-crotches; anything from head-height up to 20 metres or so. Small plants start growing further out on branches and in higher forks, but they seldom become very large because they get too heavy for the tree to support. iii) "few people or institutions can afford to grow it" Oh dear. The reporter developed a bad case of parochialism with this line. Fact is, thousands and thousands and thousands of people grow Grammatophyllum speciosum. It is a common garden-plant. Just not in New York. Walk around villages in Malaysia and Indonesia and you'll soon see what I mean. The Singapore Parks Board (an institution) has been busy for several years growing G. speciosum from seed and planting them on trees all over Singapore in one of the world's more successful attempts to re-introduce a nearly-extinct native orchid species. When you visit Singapore in September 2011 for the next World Orchid Conference, keep an eye out for them. Peter O'Byrne in Singapore _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com