Buying Your Orchid

The place where you intend to put your orchid is important when choosing a plant to buy. Everything else is a matter of personal preference for the colors and shapes of the flowers. Cost will also play a part in your choice. If you are dealing with orchids for the very first time, it is advisable not to go for the best, most expensive and rare orchids straight away - but to start with tried and tested varieties.

The best places to buy orchids

You should look for a flower store that has a good reputation, of course, a well looked after flower nursery would be better – an orchid specialist will be the best, which may be more expensive initially but will save you money in lost plants in the future. Advice from knowledgeable people is invaluable and essential when buying orchids, which can be costly if they are rare. Furthermore, an orchid expert is in the position to put together a selection of plants suited to your special circumstances, saving you later disappointments. If you go to the trouble of making an appointment, they will probably even help you with repotting older specimens.

Orchids by Mail

Nearly all specialist orchid nurseries are geared to mail order sales, the best should have online catalogues containing beautiful pictures. If you are a beginner it will be to your advantage to ask the nursery to find you a suitable plant or even put together a selection. Orchids will flourish only in the right conditions, so it is important to describe to the nursery staff the position where you intend to keep your plants. They will need to know about the availability and intensity of light and you should also give them information about the average summer and winter temperatures of the site in which your orchid will live, and let the nursey know your preferred colors.

Experienced orchid growers will be able to find just about anything they want online today at an orchid nursery, from unusual hybrids from foreign countries to attractive wild forms. There should be no problem if the nursery happens not to have the exact orchid of your choice. There are so many varieties that it is nearly always possible to find something very similar.

Note: A reputable orchid nursery will not ship orchids if their local weather has dropped below freezing or risen too high to a heat wave; you should also take this into consideration at your end if you wish to take delivery of healthy plants.

How to spot a good quality orchid in a store

The flower of the orchid may look perfect, just what you are looking for, but you also need to pay close attention to the rest of the plant. If your chosen orchid has the following characteristics, you have chosen well:

1. Firm, perfect pseudo-bulb

2. Numerous new shoots

3. Healthy, spotless foliage

4. A large number of flower-bearing ‘j’ shoots and buds.

Once you have found your perfect plant, you must make sure it is suitable for the situation in which you are going to keep it, orchids are directly dependent on conditions of light and temperature.

Whenever you are buying orchids:

1. Check the temperature range: Orchids can be assigned to three different categories of temperature and are therefore referred to as cool, temperate or warm orchids.

2. Similar plants like to live together, so if you already own some orchids, choose orchids for the same position or to be in the same room from the same temperature range.

3. Buy well-known orchids, if there is no nametag, the names of the parent plants should at least be on a label. Unknown or nameless plants will present you with the difficulty of having to work out the right care.

4. If you can, buy older specimens because they are less sensitive and therefore more likely to survive, but can be a little more expensive.

5. The plants that survive transportation the best have fully open flowers, with a few buds here and there too.

6. For the artificial climate of your house, hybrids are tougher than natural varieties

7. Buy meristem-propagated plants, orchids propagated in this way are cheaper as this method shortens the growing period. In addition, only healthy, well-grown parent plants that flower profusely are chosen for this method of propagation, which offers some guarantee of good health and abundant flowers.

8. If you are buying orchids in the wintertime they need to be well insulated from the cold, even the merest hint of frost will kill off any little buds.

9. When you get your new orchid home, spray-mist it immediately and do water them normally until at least the following day – and then only if the compost is very dry.

10. Buying orchid while on vacation or traveling abroad can be very tempting, the specimens can be very very cheap and come in many exotic varieties from such places as Thailand, South America and the Caribbean. DO NOT BUY ORCHIDS WHEN TRAVELLING! The same goes for taking orchids from the wild - it is not only wrong, it really is not worth it! The plants you transport home will not adapt to this change as you will be unable to provide them with the conditions for acclimatizing that professional gardeners have at their disposal. Most orchids will be dead before you can get them home. On top of that, there are all kinds of legal restriction when transporting plant life through different countries and bringing them home. The transportation of orchids is subject to many tight restrictions, they are the most threatened with extinction flowering plant in the world – even more so than the rarest cacti. So always buy orchids from a reputable orchid specialist or flower store, a lot of nurseries actually sell orchids that are no longer available in the wild – plants that are now grown exclusively for commercial sales, grown from seed and propagated by meristem.

Understanding Orchids by William Cullina