Orchids from around the world are getting ready for an international adventure. Nestled in cardboard boxes and surrounded by soft quilt batting, many of these orchids will travel thousands of miles by plane to get here. Orchid experts and growers from as far away as Peru or Taiwan and as close to home as Arden are packing up their prized plants for the Asheville Orchid Festival.
The festival is presented by the WNC Orchid Society, a group of roughly 100 local orchid aficionados who are uniquely dedicated and perhaps even obsessed with this beloved plant. Some members have hundreds of orchids in their collections and often a greenhouse or separate room in their homes dedicated just to orchids.
“As anybody gets into it, they gravitate to the types of flowers they like and then they look for the bigger and bigger challenges,” says Brett Hopkins, president of the WNC Orchid Society.
Likeminded orchid-lovers have come together at the organization’s annual sale and show for the past 18 years, but this year’s festival will include the American Orchid Society spring members’ meeting, as well as several new components for the estimated 10,000 attendees organizers hope to attract from throughout the Southeast and beyond.
International vendors will participate in the festival, offering highly unusual orchids difficult to find in the United States. “Orchid enthusiasts will be able to get plants that they could never purchase at any price otherwise,” Hopkins says. He points out that many of these orchids are simply not available to U.S. collectors unless the plants are brought to this country for a festival or show.
One of the world’s most surprising specimens is the Dracula orchid. Longtime orchid collector and speaker Tom Etheridge will explore these astounding plants, which he fondly calls the “whimsical monsters of the orchid world.” The deep, blood-red flowers of several Dracula species inspired the name of this beguiling plant that is native to Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. (It comes in its own wide array of subspecies, including the “Dracula Simia,” which bears the unmistakable likeness of a monkey.)
Though many orchids hail from exotic lands, several are native to Western North Carolina and other parts of the Southeast. These native plants captivate Hopkins, especially the pink lady’s-slipper orchids that grow here and around the world.
“Orchids range from the tiniest flower to the biggest flower and all these rainbow of colors and plant shapes,” he says. “The diversity is what’s so intriguing.”
The 2016 Asheville Orchid Festival and the American Orchid Society Spring Members’ Meeting happens April 14-17, with main exhibits at the NC Arboretum. See www.wncos.org for details about shows and accommodations.