Vanilla orchids?

My parents used to have one but that is literally *all* I remember, other than it was among the (near 100%) casualties of The Great Dead-Starling-Stuck-In-The-Heater-Fan Greenhouse Freezing Disaster of '88 :P I will ask mom next time I am talking to her on the phone.


Pat
 
rosalind,

vanilla orchids have a slightly different growth habit than most standard potted orchids. vanilla is a viney epiphite it needs a lot of room to sprawl. back when dawn and i part-timed at the huge orchid greenhouses, the owner allowed enormous rubber trees to root permanently in the ground. the vanilla was started in pots from fairly short 3 or 4 internode cuttings and then allowed to run up the trunks and off into the foliage. it's kinda like the philodendron that someone has let overrun their entire house after a few years, living room, diningroom , kitchen all the same single plant. if you have the space and the light the blooms are wonderful, they smell just like....you guessed it vanilla. it takes quite a few yrs and hand polination to get pods, but they are a lot of fun to cook with. kinda the satisfaction of growing you'r own.

cheers,

doc
 
Sounds like it could be a good candidate for one of our lab plants. Our Chinese scientists, for some reason more than the Americans, Indians or Russians, have a penchant for turning the genetics lab area into a rainforest. Anything insect-pollinated is good for us, since they won't spontaneously shed pollen on our cultures.

Do you need two to pollinate each other? Do the flowers open at different times to prevent, uh, self-fertilizing?
 
rosalind,

i personally don't know of any orchids that are wind polinated, that why alergists reccomend them to their patients. you can self polinate, it happens frequently in the wild. the pollen nodules are found under a little cap near the opening of the flower and the ova is usually deep in the throat. there are quite a few nice pictorials on fertilization, easily found through google. i'm not the link fiend that my wife dawn is....sorry. all in all though they make great lab companions for the reasons that you mentioned and most do quite well under flourescents.

cheers,

doc
 
Orchidaceae are used as the extreme example of coevolution, the co evolution of pollinating insects, and the flowers they pollinate.
 
Rosalind said:
Has anyone here ever grown vanilla orchids? I am curious to try them.
Click to expand...
I have a nice plant that is 3-4 years old and so for with out a bloom. They take a while to start blooming so it should be any year now. The flowers are gorgeous. You can easily find out how to pollinate them on the web.
 
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