Hello orchid lovers, I wondered what was for you the spark which pushed you to starting an orchid collection?
Your wonderful collection of photographs sums up the reason extremely well. The colours - the shapes - the variety - the way that they look ---- their flowers, as well as the whole plant - including roots --- and their various behaviours.
I was immediately impressed with orchid flowers the first time I saw them (in somebody's greenhouse) ------ maybe pretty much like a lot of us orchid growers here. Also was impressed with colours and shapes of carnivorous plants - including Nepenthes. It's not unusual in that many people that like orchids will also like carnivorous plants - and vice versa. And some like all sorts of other plants too. But --- in this thread - it's about what was the spark. The spark is just that - orchids are fascinating to watch - and they have fascinating features.
My favourite individual orchids are Rlc. Memoria Helen Brown - such as
Link1 and
Link2 and
Link3.
When combined with other very beautiful and interesting orchids in our collections - we are able to have our own home orchid shows - so that we can just watch these wonderful plants leisurely at home.
And when we combine all our pics in orchid forums such as this one ------ we are then able to go to the 'best' (open 24 hour, and free entry too) orchid shows in the world. Our orchid-forum photograph collections combined - make for an impressive orchid show display.
In the past, I assumed that I actually needed a green-house to grow orchids. But - very fortunately - it turned out that it is absolutely not necessary to grow many sorts of orchids (such as Cattleya) in a green-house ------ well, at least not in tropical North Queensland, where most of my orchids just grow under a balcony - sheltered from the rain - which led to the understanding of ----- orchids provided with suitable growing conditions will do just fine - provided we keep attacking organisms under control - or prevent them from doing anything bad to begin with.
Some orchid flowers do indeed have beautiful attractive scents/fragrance. That is certainly an added wonderful feature - even though scent/fragrance isn't a factor for my own liking of orchids.
