wall street journal
article in today's WSJ about the big box store orchid business; they
got their picture of phal blooms upside down. :) --j_a Now Blooming: The $10 Orchid Cloning Makes Elite Flower Cheaper, Easier to Care For; Red Oncidium at Home Depot By TIMOTHY W. MARTIN Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 26, 2006; Page D1 Orchids, once the pricey, delicate flowers of the elite, are now being snapped up by the masses at big-box retailers, grocery stores and service stations -- at prices cheaper than a few gallons of gas. Improvements in breeding and production methods have halved the time it takes to produce orchids to two years. That has increased supply, while new cloning and cross-breeding techniques have resulted in orchids that live longer, look flashier and cost less. Two popular varieties now sold at big retailers: Cattleyas (left) and Phalaenopsis. The Phalaenopsis, the most popular genus of orchid, used to cost between $40 and $50 during the early 1980s but now sells for as little as $10 at Home Depot. At Lowe's, a starter package of Cattleya bulbs, which are commonly used as corsages, retails for $4, while Home Depot sells flashy designer baskets of orchids in porcelain fishbowls for $99, about half the price of a decade ago. Orchids were popular in the mid-19th century in Europe, when globe-trotting explorers brought them back from Asia, South America and other faraway lands. One orchid in the late 19th century sold for what in today's dollars would be close to $600,000. Charles Darwin wrote two books about orchid cross-pollination. Maureen Strange, a retired fashion designer, began collecting orchids in the 1970s, purchasing them exclusively at small nurseries in Homestead, Fla. She used to pay $25 for a Cattleya, and $15 for a Dendrobium. Recently, she bought a dark red Oncidium at a Home Depot for $7. "Every time I go to Home Depot or Lowe's, the first thing I do is check the garden center and look at the orchids," she says. Orchids now rank as the No. 2-selling potted plant, behind poinsettias, up from its No. 7 ranking nearly a decade ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than 17.2 million orchids were sold in the U.S. in 2004, up from 8.2 million in 1996, the first year the government charted orchids as a separate category. Most of the new demand is coming from a previously untapped market: the non-hobbyist who loves the look of orchids but can't afford expensive ones and doesn't have the time or patience to pamper them. The flowers are becoming increasingly popular in home décor -- to make a statement in an entrance hallway, for instance. In the past, they were purchased largely for greenhouse collections or as gifts, but last year, nearly 75% of potted orchid purchases were for personal use, up from 61.6% in 2003, says the Ipsos-Insight FloralTrends consumer-tracking report. NEW CROP See more on the cloned orchids hitting big-box stores."You can take a potted-plant orchid, put it in your home, give it no light and no water and a month later it's still alive and in bloom," says Rob Griesbach, an Agriculture Department geneticist. Most of the new mass-market orchids are hybrids that have been cloned, giving them identical petal shapes, colors and shelf life. Many stay in bloom more than six months, three to five times longer than other flowering house plants. The three orchid species that dominate the mass market are also among the easiest to clone: the robust Phalaenopsis, hybrids of Oncidiums and the tall Dendrobium. Many of the cloned orchids are duplicated from American Orchid Society winners. Some clones bought at big-box retailers have re-appeared at shows and won, says Ron McHatton, a certified Orchid Society judge who works for Worldwide Orchids Inc. in Apopka, Fla. The mainstreaming of orchids isn't welcome in every corner of the flower world. "I came up through the old school," says Ned Nash, 53, a one-time orchid nursery owner who left the industry in 2003 after business slowed. He enjoyed nurturing his orchids over multiple years at greenhouses in Santa Barbara, Calif. Orchid nurseries that once were the primary source of the flowers are feeling a "bit of a money crunch," says Lucinda Winn, a co-owner of J&L Orchids in Easton, Conn., winners of hundreds of American Orchid Society awards. J&L now relies more on the business from diehard collectors, who search for rare species of orchids costing hundreds of dollars. In the late 1970s, the Agriculture Department's Mr. Griesbach led a USDA breeding program to create a mass-market orchid. That meant making the plant smaller, sturdier and longer-lived. Department scientists started by reducing the orchid's three-foot-leaf spread to a foot, then cross-pollinated it with fast-growing plants and developed an appropriate potting-soil mix. The first plant hit the market in 1980. Still, mass orchids didn't catch on until the 1990s, when growers came up with the production methods and equipment to churn out orchids on a grand scale. Kerry Herndon, owner of one of the country's largest orchid nurseries in Homestead, Fla., was leafing through old flower-society journals when he realized that the pricey orchid-production techniques hadn't changed in decades. He bought thousands of orchids from Taiwan and revamped his South Florida nursery to resemble automated greenhouses popularized by the Dutch. Now he says he sells 4.5 million orchids in a typical year to Home Depot, Kroger and other retail chains. With 2.8 million square feet of greenhouses, Mr. Herndon's orchids are assembled for retailers like a car on an assembly line. Conveyor belts transport large metal trays of orchids under "reverse osmosis" watering units and into climate-controlled zones. "It's just not what you think of as a nursery," Mr. Herndon says. |
wall street journal
And that was the AOS immediate past-president.
-danny "Susan Erickson" wrote in message ... On 26 Apr 2006 11:18:41 -0700, wrote: -- I love this quote from the middle of the article................. See more on the cloned orchids hitting big-box stores."You can take a potted-plant orchid, put it in your home, give it no light and no water and a month later it's still alive and in bloom," says Rob Griesbach,.......... I am sure he meant to say that you did not need special additional light -- but no water for a month? This guy needs his head examined. SuE http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/main.php |
wall street journal
Did you note that the $10 orchids were 19.95? Not a 10 buck orchid in
sight! Here in Houston Lowe's is at 24.95 and HD is the same. The WSJ is full of it! Joe T |
wall street journal
Joe, the WSJ printed a press release that it was given by Home Depot.
Newspapers print press releases (if they have space, which depends on the source of the press releases; big advertisers like HD, which run a lot of expensive, full-page ads, can get a lot of such space). They don't investigate or proofread them. So, IMHO, it's HD that's full of it, but has sufficient advertising budget to get its "it" printed as "news" ... But if you really pick thru it, they probably have an out -- the $10 orchid in the headline was the red Oncid, as best I could tell; the rest of the article was on Catts and Phals, unless I missed something. Kenni "jtill" wrote in message ups.com... Did you note that the $10 orchids were 19.95? Not a 10 buck orchid in sight! Here in Houston Lowe's is at 24.95 and HD is the same. The WSJ is full of it! Joe T |
wall street journal
The problem with these articles is that they seem to be written by people
with exactly *zero* knowledge of the subject. The NY Times has run articles in the past, but for the most part they aren't worth sharing. One wonders if these "papers of record" would run financial articles under the by line of an orchid expert........ Diana "jtill" wrote in message ups.com... Did you note that the $10 orchids were 19.95? Not a 10 buck orchid in sight! Here in Houston Lowe's is at 24.95 and HD is the same. The WSJ is full of it! Joe T |
wall street journal
I bought a 'Sharry Baby' from Lowe's for 15 bucks. Marked down from
29.95 because it was in such poor condition. Is that the red one? It is now putting out new growth. Joe T |
wall street journal
In article . com,
"jtill" wrote: Did you note that the $10 orchids were 19.95? Not a 10 buck orchid in sight! Here in Houston Lowe's is at 24.95 and HD is the same. The WSJ is full of it! Joe T i've bought ten dollar orchids; of course, never at the big box stores. ;) --j_a |
wall street journal
Sue,
I have a Phal Baldan's Kaleidoscope 'Golden Treasure' AM/AOS that gets watered once a month -- it just does not dry out any faster. I bought it in bloom with two spikes on 10/31/2005. I have watered it exactly 7 times since then. It continues to be in bloom on both spikes. It's in a transparent plastic pot in moss, and I can see that it has a very healthy root system, but most times when I check the moss just continues to me moist. So watering once a month is not necessarily nuts. It just requires an orchid that will do well in these conditions. Most won't. Joanna "Susan Erickson" wrote in message ... On 26 Apr 2006 11:18:41 -0700, wrote: -- I love this quote from the middle of the article................. See more on the cloned orchids hitting big-box stores."You can take a potted-plant orchid, put it in your home, give it no light and no water and a month later it's still alive and in bloom," says Rob Griesbach,.......... I am sure he meant to say that you did not need special additional light -- but no water for a month? This guy needs his head examined. SuE http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/main.php |
wall street journal
Have you even looked at the article? It's not a HD press release. I
searched the archive for that reporter and he had another piece of fluff on a totally different topic last month (there were more hits farther back in time but I'm certainly not going to pay to retrieve them.) One time I got a nice paph at Lowes for 9.95. Prices will vary over time at any particular store and between different stores, even in the same chain. Here in Atlanta 24.95 is about the most you will pay for an orchid in any of the chain stores, and there are usually some below $15 (mostly dendrobiums or oncids.). -danny "Kenni Judd" wrote in message ... Joe, the WSJ printed a press release that it was given by Home Depot. Newspapers print press releases (if they have space, which depends on the source of the press releases; big advertisers like HD, which run a lot of expensive, full-page ads, can get a lot of such space). They don't investigate or proofread them. So, IMHO, it's HD that's full of it, but has sufficient advertising budget to get its "it" printed as "news" ... But if you really pick thru it, they probably have an out -- the $10 orchid in the headline was the red Oncid, as best I could tell; the rest of the article was on Catts and Phals, unless I missed something. Kenni "jtill" wrote in message ups.com... Did you note that the $10 orchids were 19.95? Not a 10 buck orchid in sight! Here in Houston Lowe's is at 24.95 and HD is the same. The WSJ is full of it! Joe T |
wall street journal
J Fortuna, that is good information. Clear pots sure beat guessing
and/or poking around on top to check dryness. I switched to S/H and one reason was the guessing game of watering. You are a smart lady! Joe T |
wall street journal
Joe T,
I am only now trying s/h for the first time -- I bought 3 s/h pots, and have repotted one orchid into it thus far, and plan to repot another this upcoming weekend. We will see how well they do in it for me. Up until now I have known when to water orchids that are in moss or in transparent pots or both, but if they are neither then I have tended to water them on a fixed schedule (for example: once a week) since I cannot tell when a non-moss non-transparent-pot orchid is dry. Amazingly enough even the orchids that are on a fixed schedule are for the most part doing just fine or even thriving beautifully, which makes me think that our desire to water them precisely when they need to be watered may be a bit overrated since many orchids will adapt to a less than perfect watering schedule. Joanna "jtill" wrote in message oups.com... J Fortuna, that is good information. Clear pots sure beat guessing and/or poking around on top to check dryness. I switched to S/H and one reason was the guessing game of watering. You are a smart lady! Joe T |
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