Gannett News Service
The pink phalaenopsis orchid thrives in hanging baskets.

You, too, could fall victim to intoxicating orchid fever

DOROTHEA SMITH, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published May 19
If you haven't yet been seduced by an orchid, beware. Few mortals are able to resist their charms.

And as any orchid lover will tell you, you can't just own just one. You, too, could contract the orchid fever that is sweeping the country. You would have lots of company.

The American Orchid society, with more than 35,000 members, is the largest group dedicated to a single flower. It seems that orchid hobbyists can't get enough information about their favorite plant, so the society opened a new $8 million headquarters, the International Orchid Center, west of Delray Beach, Fla., to provide exhibits and resources for orchid fanciers.

Still not worried? Take as a warning what happened to Marilyn and Al Rutel of White Plains, N.Y., who for 20 years have been designing exhibits. Marilyn also lectures on how to grow and care for orchids.

They started innocently enough. They led normal lives and raised four children. She gardened, while he helped with the heavy chores and built garden structures for her, but that was the extent of his interest in things horticultural.

Then came the day when Marilyn attended a lecture on African violets, which she collected, at the Horticultural Society of New York in Manhattan. There she saw a posting for an all-day orchid workshop and told her husband about it. He surprised her by expressing interest.

Something about orchids attracts men (and women) like nothing else, Marilyn says. Among the huge array of sirens in the family Orchidaceae, the favorite of men tends to be the lady's-slipper orchid, or Paphiopedilum ("paph" for short).

The couple started out with just one orchid. "If you bring one orchid into the house," Marilyn says, "I guarantee you there will soon be many more. My next purchase was for 500." These quickly met their demise. "I started to cry," she recalls. "I was at a complete loss, because I didn't know how to grow these things."

Those were the days when orchids were much more expensive than today; they can be owned for as low as $10 to $15 apiece because of modern reproductive methods. But you can still pay $100 and much more for rare ones. In time, the Rutels learned that orchids are no more difficult to grow than many other plants -- if you just understand their needs for light, water, air and temperature.

"It was trial and error," Marilyn says. "We went to local orchid societies. We visited other growers, and you read, read and read. While other people go to bed with novels, we go to bed with books about orchids."

Eventually they purchased a greenhouse to hold their burgeoning collection. That was after Marilyn inadvertently flooded the living room trying to provide moisture for the 1,500 plants they had housed there. "My husband accused me of doing it just to get a greenhouse," she says.

The Rutels are retired now and the caretakers of 4,000 orchids, an eclectic collection of which the majority are -- guess what? -- paphs. The first thing they do every morning, right after breakfast, is to run to the greenhouse to check on them all. At night, with flashlight in hand they check them for pests such as slugs and snails.

Nowadays, they travel extensively, lecturing while still learning more about their hobby.

"You are embraced by anyone who has ever grown orchids," Marilyn says. "They will take you on tour, they will show you other orchid collections, they will feed you. You share a common love."

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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