Sowing the Seeds

Last weekend our local orchid club had it’s annual show in the town hall.  As you can imagine, the hall was bursting with big, luscious, colourful blooms! All looking spectacular and enough to turn on the most ardent non gardener type.

There were a lot of cymbidium orchids in the show but also some beautiful, intricate and extremely delicate natives such as the Sydney Rock Orchid shown in the next photo.

These are such beauties and grow in our local area on the cliff faces around many river beds and waterfalls. They are an epiphytic orchid which means they thrive on trunks and branches of trees or even rocks. Epiphytes are sometimes referred to as ‘air plants.’

How impressive are they? Many people are scared to grow them because they really do appear to be just so delicate. The orchid club does an annual demonstration and workshop at our garden centre each year and shows how to pot and care for them. Most of the club members say to “just keep ‘em in a pot under a tree down the backyard and they will be fine.” It seems that if you fuss over them, that will most probably be their downfall.

I love the green ones, I think they are my favourite!