Many estimates suggest that there are between 20,000 and 30,000 different species of orchids in the world, with even more hybrids available within the hobby.
Hundreds of people turned up to Sarasota Municipal Auditorium on Sunday for the 63rd Sarasota Orchid Society show. [HERALD-TRIBUNE STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL MOORE JR.]
One of the area’s oldest and most colorful traditions returned to Sarasota Municipal Auditorium over the weekend.
The 63rd annual Sarasota Orchid Society show was in full bloom Saturday and Sunday, featuring hundreds of orchids from the Sarasota, Venice and Englewood societies. With the theme “Orchids in Paradise,” the show featured a variety of vendors, informational talks and lectures, as well as award-winning and prized flowers on display.
But more than anything, the two-day event served as a gathering place for professionals and hobbyists alike to come together and share their love for one of the world’s largest families of flowering plants.
“This is a place where you walk in and it smells beautiful. The color is beautiful. It’s hard to walk out of here without an orchid. You always tell yourself, ‘Just one more orchid,’ because it’s never enough,” said Susan Felber with the Sarasota Orchid Society.
The best thing about orchids is that beauty can be enjoyed by hobbyists of all levels, according to Felber, who added that the show is the perfect introduction for people looking to add a little botany to their list of hobbies.
Paula Polen, who runs Art Stone Orchids in St. Petersburg alongside her husband, Michael, said that most people looking to get into orchids for the first time tend to overestimate the difficulty in keeping them. “Leave them alone and don’t water them too much and a lot of them will do fine. When most people first start out, they tend to water them too much and that can kill them” said Polen.
The event had informational classes on orchids for just such an occasion. The workshops covered topics such as how to build a plant collection in this climate, deciding which orchids are best for your collection and how to go about purchasing them, while also learning how to care for the common indoor Phalaenopsis orchid. There were also classes on how to differentiate between hybrids and species, how to repot as well as a general question-and-answer period.
Similar free culture classes are also held regularly at Sarasota Orchid Society meetings, which can be found at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Activities Center on the first Monday of every month at 6 p.m.
While there’s plenty of room for beginners interested in orchid keeping, there’s also a lot of fun to be had by more advanced enthusiasts. Look no further than retired orchid taxonomist Stig Dalstrom, known as The Wild Orchid Man, who has lived in Sarasota since moving from Sweden in 1997 and spends his time traveling the world and researching orchids with the support of the Sarasota Orchid Society while making documentaries with filmmaker Darryl Saffer.
“There’s so much variety. We don’t know how many different kinds of orchids there are; it could be as many as 35,000 different species — we just don’t know. The more we learn, the less we seem to know for certain,” said Dalstrom, who is traveling to Bhutan next week to help with an orchid conservation project administrated by the country’s National Biodiversity Center.
And while there are all different types of orchids, the hobby also attracts enthusiasts from all different walks of life, such as Julien Baruch, who studied economics and finance at New College of Florida before graduating in 2018. He now spends his days working with flowering plants at Krull-Smith Orchids in Apopka and, much like Dalstrom, was attracted by the complexity and the immense variety held by the family of flowering plants.
“There’s so much more variety than what you see in your average supermarket or Home Depot. There’s so much more to explore than you realize; you’ve just got to keep your eye out for it,” said Baruch. “Keeping orchids is my favorite addiction.”
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Sarasota orchid show, now in its 63rd year, has a flower for everybody - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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