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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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