Orchidaceae

My personal favorite flowers are orchids. I like them enough that over the spring of my sophomore year and fall of junior year, I ended up accumulating seven different Phalaenopsis orchids of varying color. As demonstration of how much I am obsessed with orchids, I actually found one of those seven orchids in the trash one day and dug it out. Thank fully for me orchids are also my roommates favorite flower, so my excessive plant intake, in our small Corps dorm, didn't bother her in the least. Mostly I purchased Phalaenopsis orchids for two reasons. The first being that you can find them at Home Depot, Lowe's, or your local grocery store chain relatively easy, and the second reason being that I can’t bring myself to pay more than $10 on a plant, having limited funds. So the Cattleya variety of orchids, though easily found at Home Depot or Lowe's, were out of the question of purchasing because they cost like $16, and they don’t come with a pot!

Singapore Airport

Here in Malaysia though, to my satisfaction, orchids are in abundance both in variety and amount. Orchids grow in the wild here and are frequently used in landscaping so you see them all over the place. When I went to play golf this last weekend, there were bamboo orchids (Arudina) growing along the road, just how you see Black-eyed Susan flowers along the road in Texas, and on my travel route over here, I was gleefully excited by the all the orchids present at my layover in the Singapore airport. They even have an orchid garden here in K.L.!

Phalaenopsis growing on tree

So I feel like it is almost a requirement that Zoo Negara has orchids, which of course they do. So far I have found orchids from the genera Phalaenopsis, Arudina, Spathoglottis, Vanda, Aerides, and Rhynchostylis either on the grounds of the zoo or inside the nursery.  I have probably chewed Eza’s and Ain’s ears off with my questions about them. After a couple of days of questions, they pulled this book on Malaysian practices for orchids off the book shelf and offered it for me to read. It’s in Malay, so I don’t know everything that is being said, but it also contains step-by-step instructions with images, so with use of Google translate, I was able to understand what was going on.

Charcoal and red brick medium mixture

So there are two different types of orchids, terrestrial and epiphytic. The terrestrial orchid genera at the zoo include Spathoglottis and Arudina. The epiphytic orchid genera include Phalaenopsis, Vanda, Aerides and Rhynchostylis. The difference in the classification has to do with the type of medium the orchid roots are placed in. Here at the zoo, the terrestrial orchids are placed in a potting mixture that we make in the nursery at a 1:3:3 ration of top soil, which is the color of clay but not as compacted, crushed charcoal and a pulverized coconut coir. Additionally, some slow release orchid fertilizer is added during the potting process. The resulting medium is very dark in color but does not compact very much even with water present, which is ideal for drainage away required from the orchid roots. Conversely, the epiphytic orchids are grown using two different mediums. A mixture of chunks of charcoal and of red brick is used when the orchids are placed into pots. While other epiphytic orchids are attached to trees by placing a small amount of sphagnum moss between the tree bark and orchid roots, and then the roots and moss are braced to the tree with string until the roots have anchored successfully. A thin layer of wood chips are sprinkled across the pots to hold a little moisture to the roots during the day.

Orchid feature at Zoo Negara

For the epiphytic orchids, not many nutrients are provided through their rooting mediums, so a weekly fertilizer is applied to help in maintaining a constant bloom. The orchids in pots that are not in bloom tend to be taken back to the nursery, and hung in a pergola structure, until buds form and then are taken back out to different landscape features at the zoo.

Fungus and root rot is sometimes an issue with the epiphytic orchids, so if this happens, the plants are gently removed from their pots and medium, and then the affected roots will be removed, and the plant is soaked in a fungicide for 15 minutes. They are then rinsed and placed into new medium.

Orchid suppliers here grow their orchids from seeds. Orchid seeds are very filamentous and contain very little nutrient supply, so the seeds are placed into a flask with agar gel. Once the orchids have reached the size of about your thumb, the flasks are broken and the orchids removed. They are then rinsed off and then soaked in a fungicide for 15 minutes, followed by a rinsing and then placement on top of a small amount of sphagnum moss. Once the orchids reach a decent size, they are then placed into their respective types of medium.