My Recent BBG Visit and Orchid Purchases

One of the best parts of Funemployment is having the opportunity to take advantage of deals like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden‘s Free Winter Weekdays (which ends March 2). Once I discovered I could visit without paying a dime I knew I HAD to go see their orchid collection, which is in bloom between November and March. The orchid collection is located in the Aquatic House portion of the Steinhardt Conservatory, which I had somehow completely bypassed during my previous BBG visits.

So a couple weeks ago I made my way to the BBG, armed with my fully charged digital camera. I was the only visitor inside the Aquatic House at the time and it was so peaceful to have the whole place to myself. The house isn’t all that big, but there are a ton of orchid plants inside and it is definitely tropical in there; I had to take my puffy winter coat off immediately. There were plenty of Vandas in bloom:

Purple Vanda orchid

There were also a bunch of orchids I’d never seen or heard of before, like this Catasetum saccatum:Catasetum saccatum

You can see the entire set of photos that I took by clicking here.

Of course, I made my way to the Garden Shop to see what their selection of orchids was like. There weren’t a lot of healthy-looking orchids to choose from, but I ended up buying two orchids – each on sale for $12 apiece – that looked promising. I say promising because each had new growths visible so I assumed that they are fairly healthy. The first is a NOID* Dendrobium with two new growths. You can see the whole plant with its little green growths here:

NOID Dendrobium

The other is an Odontoglossum ‘Geyser Gold’ with one new growth, which is a little hard to see in this photo. The growth is on the right hand side at the base of the shorter, brown-tipped leaf:

Odontoglossum 'Geyser Gold'

Below is what the blooms should look like on my Odontoglossum if I take good care of it – pretty, huh?

Odontoglossum 'Geyser Gold'
Photo credit: Paramount Orchids

I repotted each of the plants as soon as I got home and have fertilized them once so far. I can tell that the new growths on each of these orchids have gotten bigger in the past couple of weeks, so I think they are both doing well. I’m especially excited to see what the Dendrobium looks like if I can get it to bloom; there’s something extra fun knowing that I have a surprise orchid. As always, stay tuned for updates!

*NOID is a term that means “no identification” and is used for orchids that have no tags.

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