Talented Orchid Man Brings Beauty to Life in Malibu Laboratory
In a laboratory off a secluded canyon road in Malibu, women in sterile gloves move what looks like bits of green algae from test tube to flask.
As the months go by, the green goo develops into tiny plants. After nearly two years in the glass containers, the plants are transplanted into pots of shredded bark and placed in one of three giant greenhouses next to the lab. With two or three more years of intense mothering, the labor pays off.
Long, thin spikes shoot from the stems, which by then also hold floppy, elongated leaves. And from these spikes develop bulbous swellings that will burst into some of the most elegant and delicate flowers in the world.
The plants--commonly called moth orchids--are coveted worldwide and are sent from their Zuma Canyon nursing site to customers from Hong Kong to the White House.
Prize-Winning Creations
The lab and greenhouses, home of Zuma Canyon Orchids, is the workplace of orchid breeder Amado Vazquez, who has been creating and re-creating award-winning blooms for nearly 40 years.
American Orchid Society Treasurer Leon Loeb Jr. said that very few commercial orchid houses match Vazquez’s work.
“In the particular orchid in which they specialize, I would place Zuma Canyon as one of four, maybe five great firms in the world,” he said.
Vazquez’s hybrids also have helped move the moth orchid-- Phalaenopsis --in the last 20 years from the fifth-most popular genus in the world to the most or second-most popular, Loeb said. The other genus-- Cattleya-- is the short-lived standard corsage flower.
Friends, Customers Honored
Often, Vazquez will name one of his new orchids after a good friend and customer.
In 1982, he christened one of his hybrids, a white orchid with a red lip, Phalaenopsis nancy reagan (because red is the First Lady’s favorite color), and sent several of the plants to the White House.
Vazquez, a hobbyist orchid grower in Mexico, came to the United States in 1949. He went to work as head grower at Arthur Freed Orchids, founded by the late film producer.
Determined to make it on his own, he saved enough money by 1973 to buy four acres in Malibu and also the Freed business, which he renamed Zuma Canyon.
Author Joan Didion, whose daughter Quintana Roo Dunne has her name on one variety, immortalized Vazquez’s orchid ranch in the final chapter of a book about her California experiences.
In “The White Album,” Didion in 1979 captured the peace and protection from the wild that the orchids get in the family’s hands.
“There in the greenhouse nothing would break the orchids and they would be pollinated at full moon and high tide by Amado Vazquez, and their seedlings would be tended in a sterile box with sterile gloves and sterile tools by Amado Vazquez’s wife, Maria, and the orchids would not seem to die at all,” Didion wrote.
The walls of his office are covered with the many medals and certificates Vazquez has won through the years.
His work has allowed him and his wife, who supervises the laboratory, to live comfortably in Malibu and travel around the world to demonstrate the flowers of their labor, or to seek a rare variety to integrate into their breeding program.
But no longer interested in world travel, Vazquez says he prefers to spend his days at the ranch, in his lab or out in the garden.
Passing It On
He has turned his business matters over to his son, company vice president George Vazquez.
The company, which has grown steadily from its initial customer list of 1,000 to about 6,000, has a hard time keeping up with demand, the younger Vazquez says. Eighty percent of the plants are sold before they bloom.
While the average orchid in bloom sells for $25 to $50, some varieties, usually the award-winning ones, sell for more than $20,000 to growers who want to mass-produce the variety.
Many of the customers are hobbyists who purchase $33 “community pots” with 16 inch-high plants, which they raise and sell themselves.
The ranch is closed to the public--buyers only come by appointment--and most business is done by mail and over the phone.
Bigger Blossoms
One of the main goals of the hybridizing program at the ranch is the development of plants with larger, showier blooms.
“Ninety percent of the orchid hobbyists want bigger and better orchids. That’s the nature of mankind: bigger and better,” Vazquez said.
Zuma Canyon’s award-winning white orchid variety-- Doritaenopsis white wonder, or Zuma Giant--is one of those “bigger and better” plants. Representing 12 generations of cross-breeding, the plant sends up spikes of giant white flowers--more than 6 inches across--and received highest honors from the American Orchid Society last year.
The original Phalaenopsis-- the wild moth orchid--has mere 2-inch flowers.
“This is pollinated in the wild during the full moon when the moths will be attracted to this from the reflection of the moon,” Vazquez said, pointing to one of the wild varieties nurtured at the ranch.
“And in the jungle when they are moving,” he said, imitating the action of the wind as he lightly tapped a flower spike, “they kind of look like moths and they are fairly small.”
