At the beginning of orchid cultivation in Europe and later the United States stands one orchid group at the very first place: Cattleya and its relatives. Their home are the subtropical and tropical regions of Central and South America. Out of flower these plants are not very spectacular. They have stout inflated stems that provide storage of water and nutrients, which is not unlike the Dendrobium orchids of which many species grow in the warmer parts of China. This resemblance is not incidentally because both groups, though not closely related have the same growing habits: they grow on trees, often on the naked bark, or on rocks.
Although dendrobiums often have showy and colourful flowers those of most cattleyas and their relatives are in addition usually very big. And it was that remarkable showiness that caused a sensation, when Cattleya labiata opened their 15 cm wide flowers of pink to pale purple-red for the first time in England in November 1818. This happened in the home of William Cattley who collected many exotic plants from all over the world of which many where orchids. Other wealthy gentlemen in Great Britain, which exploited many colonies in those days, did the same since the late 18th century. But the flowers in Cattley's collection would change the horticultural world in Britain from here also in other European countries, because they started a competition between collectors in possessing the most spectacular exotic orchids. Based on this within a few centuries an orchid industry was founded that relied on continuous imports of orchids from tropical countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia. This industry had its heyday in the late 19th century and declined after the first World War. Meanwhile the artificial production of orchids was increasingly used to stock up the greenhouses of the nurseries. After Louis Knudson at Cornell University, USA, discovered in 1922 that orchid seeds can be grown in the laboratory on agar gel with added sugar and fertilizer salts, a new orchid industry developed in the West that today makes more than a billion dollars worldwide, not only in Europe and the United States but also in Japan, Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
Many myth are told about the early days of orchid cultivation in the West. One is that Cattley received his precious Cattleya labiata as packing material for some other plants he purchased from Brazil. The myth goes on that just of curiosity he didn't throw away the coarse stems but planted them and was rewarded by the beautiful flowers. True is that Mr. William Swainson collected exotic plants north of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, somewhere north of the organ mountains. Among these plants was Cattleya labiata which was send the famous botanists William J. Hooker and to Mr. Cattley. The young John Lindley, who should later become the so-called "father" of orchid science in Europe was employed by Cattley in 1821 to write and publish about the various exotic plants in his collection. Lindley named the beautiful Brazilian orchid in one of the first of these publications after his employer Cattleya labiata.
Today Cattleya and its relatives Laelia, Brassavola, Rhyncholaelia and Sophronitis, but especially the horticultural hybrids between them are still favorites among the orchid growers all over the world. But already from the beginning in the late 18th and early 19th century other orchids with showy flowers have attracted the enthusiasts attention and have long replaced Cattleya from the number one place in the international orchid world. But it still is Cattleya and its history which gives an essence of what the orchid hobby means in the West: admiring colorful and showy flowers of exotic provenance with only minor interest if at all in the leaves or habit of the none-flowering plant and musing about the stories related around these plants, I.e. how and in what country they were discovered and by whom, which scientists described them and which growers mastered to flower them first. Today we know 25,000 orchid species in the world. Of these about 6000 species are cultivated in botanical gardens, nurseries and private collections, about 1000 species are more frequently seen and a few hundred form the cadre of species in horticulture. Additionally more than 50,000 horticultural orchid hybrids have been produced since 1856, when the very first artificially orchid hybrid in the West was created by the English nursery man John Dominy. Again only a few percentage of these hybrids is widespread in the orchid collections, but some, especially the Phalaenopsis hybrids can be found by the millions all over the world.
Hybrids of Phalaenopsis, but also Oncidium, big-flowered Cymbidium and a few others have already entered the Chinese flower market and it is most likely, that the traditional Chinese Cymbidiums, admired and cultivated since millennia, will soon get new companions by their sides in the collections of orchid enthusiasts in China. It will be my pleasure to introduce some of these exotic orchids to you, dear reader, on these pages in the coming issues of Orchid World.
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