Oh, Those Orchids

Orchids are suddenly everywhere. Nurseries and florists are full of them. You can find them at swap meets and farmers’ markets. Even while waiting in line at the checkout counter, you’ll see them in people’s market baskets along with the French bread and cheese. Orchids are even going to be on “60 Minutes.” They are trendy.

They are also a lot cheaper than they were a few years ago--no longer exclusively a rich-man’s hobby--and many are higher-quality plants to boot. Tissue-culture labs at nurseries have made it possible to quickly clone the best varieties.

John Ernest, the lab manager at wholesale orchid giant Gallup & Stribling in Carpinteria, says that 90% of what they grow are now clones.

“Modern tissue culture has made high quality affordable,” he said.

In addition, some orchids--phalaenopsis mostly--are now coming from huge commercial growers in Asia and are popular house plants. While a phalaenopsis may bloom for a month, most people find that it is not easy to re-bloom. Many orchids are difficult to grow.

Not so with cymbidium orchids. Cymbidiums are easy. If there were a state orchid, chances are it would be a cymbidium. It’s one orchid that is easily grown outdoors in much of California, but nowhere else in the continental U.S., not even in Florida, which is too humid and too warm at night.

A Bloom With Staying Power

Native to China and other parts of Asia, cymbidiums are now standard California garden fare, commonly available at nurseries at this time of the year, when so many bloom.

“They thrive on benign neglect, a little food, a lot of water and a half-day of sunlight,” said Jo Ann Farrar, who cares for about 350 at Sherman Gardens in Corona del Mar and an additional 200 at home.

The fact that the bloom spikes can last as long as a month hasn’t hurt their popularity. The so-called early kinds begin blooming in September or October, and late kinds carry the season into June. Right now is peak bloom, when so many of the 4,000 to 5,000 registered hybrids flower.

Cymbidiums first appeared in California backyards during World War II, when a couple of big growers introduced them to the public as orchids for outdoors (there was no rationing of flowers). Interest peaked in the 1950s and ‘60s, when elaborate backyard shade houses were designed just for prized collections. As their novelty wore off, cymbidiums were relegated to the status of mere patio plant, but interest is building again thanks to such new wrinkles as pendulous cymbidiums, miniatures and exciting new colors.

Cymbidium colors are getting brighter, and there are new shades of pink, plus some bronzed fall-foliage tints. But pure white remains the most popular choice, followed by those distinctive lime-green blooms for which cymbidiums are known, according to Oscar Caas, head of sales at Gallup & Stribling.

The Outdoorsmen of the Orchid World

The orchids are a snap to grow outdoors in most of the Los Angeles basin, and in Orange, Santa Barbara and San Diego counties--wherever temperatures don’t drop below 28 degrees for very long. Some inland areas can get too cold. Hobbyists warn that extra protection of some kind may be needed east of West Covina or in the San Fernando Valley (they are grown in both areas).

They won’t grow indoors.

“You can take them indoors for the day, but, like a cat, let them out for the night,” Farrar said.

They need the cool night air and won’t flower unless there’s a difference of about 25 degrees between day and night temperatures, one reason they are hard to flower in Florida.

Cymbidiums are almost always grown in pots. It would take way too much amending of garden soil to give them the lightning-fast drainage they require.

They can be grown in really big containers but need repotting every few years, and big pots are hard to handle. Most hobbyists grow them in black plastic pots, which don’t dry out as fast as clay. Many grow cymbidiums in gallon nursery cans, putting them into decorative cache pots when they come into bloom.

Most bloom only once a year, but some of the newest hybrids, according to Farrar, may bloom twice a year--once very early in the season and again very late (one of hers blooms in November and again in April).

To get the drainage they need, cymbidiums of all kinds are grown in pure, chunky, orchid bark, with maybe a little perlite and charcoal added. At Sherman Gardens, Farrar uses a mix that is three parts seedling bark (one-fourth-inch to one-eighth-inch size), two parts perlite and one part horticultural charcoal.

In the city of Orange, hobbyist Bill Austin--a retired Curity diaper salesman--uses eight parts small-size bark, one part perlite and one part charcoal. He grows all his cymbidiums in gallon cans.

He always moistens the mix before storing or using it, and thinks this an important step. At a talk he recently gave on cymbidium culture at the South Coast Plaza Orchid Show, Austin compared his moist mix to turkey stuffing.

“Sounds strange, but that’s the right amount of moisture,” he said. He feels dry mix can damage the roots.

Repot Every Couple of Years

Cymbidiums need repotting about every two to three years, mostly because the bark begins to get mushy and drainage degrades.

Definitely repot when plants get close to being pot bound. There is an old gardener’s tale that pot-bound cymbidiums bloom best, but Palos Verdes hybridizer Bill Bailey, who’s been growing them for 40 years, says they actually do better when regularly repotted.

Farrar said to repot when the pseudobulbs--the bulblike swellings at the base of the leaves--get within an inch of the edge of the pot, “or there will be no room for new bulbs or blooms.”

Pseudobulbs get used up as the plant grows and become known as “backbulbs,” which should be cut off at repotting time and tossed.

The time to repot is immediately after a cymbidium blooms, so it will have enough time to grow and flower again the next year.

Austin taps the plant out of the pot by rapping on the side with his “potting stick.” He fashions the potting stick from a cut-down broom handle about 2 feet long. He sharpens one end so it resembles a knife blade. He keeps the other end blunt, and this is the end he taps against the pot to loosen the root mass (a rubber handle is on the potting stick pictured).

Once it’s out, he shakes all the bark from the roots and trims them to about 2 to 3 inches long (he holds the roots like a barber grabs a hank of hair, then cuts). Remove the dark dead roots and save only the white new roots.

With a blast of water, Austin washes out any remaining bark, then repots. He uses both ends of his potting stick to force soil between and around roots so the plant is really packed into its pot.

“You should be able to pick up the plant by its leaves and not have it come out of the pot,” he said.

Cymbidiums like lots of fertilizer, and cymbidium fanciers have a million ways to fertilize. The easiest, suggested by Farrar, is to simply add “timed release” fertilizer pellets--the kind designed to last nine months--to the pots in spring and again in fall. Osmocote, Sierra and Sta-Green are several kinds of slow-release fertilizers. Cover the fertilizer pellets with about an inch of bark.

When plants are actually in flower, you can keep them in a fair amount of shade so the blooms don’t bleach. The flowers also will last longer.

Otherwise, “give them plenty of sun,” Bailey said. Standard cymbidiums need about half sun and half shade in most areas. You’ve overdone the sun when the leaves get little white spots or streaks, a sign of sunburn, Austin said. Black tips and streaks usually have to do with salts and minerals in the water. You can leave them or trim them off.

As for watering, never let cymbidium orchids go completely dry.

“It’s probably the most important part of caring for cymbidiums,” Austin said.

Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.

A Bloom With a Distinguished Family Background

Orchids arrived in California in the early 1900s, but cymbidiums didn’t take off until much later. Here’s a brief history of cymbidiums in Southern California, according to orchid expert Ernest Hetherington of Arcadia.

1911-- William Hertrich, the superintendent at the Huntington estate in San Marino, plants various orchids in a shade garden outside Henry Huntington’s home--and the cymbidiums are standouts, doing better than the other orchids.

1920s--Cymbidiums are grown on estates in Santa Barbara.

1940s--English and European orchid nurseries send stock to U.S. to preserve them during World War II. California becomes the world center of cymbidium culture.

1947--Cymbidium Society founded. Two big growers are the nursery firms of Armacost & Royston, and Evans & Reeves, both in West Los Angeles.

1950s to 1970s--Boom time for orchid nurseries. Many established, including Stewart Orchids, Sherman Orchid Gardens, Dos Pueblos, Menninger, Petersons, Bowers and Santa Barbara Orchid Estate. Miniatures are introduced for the first time in the mid-1950s.

1979--The first pendulous cymbidium wins an award in England.

2000--Now common nursery plants and used as cut flowers or in corsages. --RS

Group Gatherings for Cymbidium Aficionados

* Goleta will host the 25th annual Cymbidium Congress on April 1 at the Goleta Holiday Inn. This convention of the Cymbidium Society of America will be open to the public. The registration fee varies but can include six lectures and admission to the nearby Santa Barbara International Orchid Show (which runs March 31-April 2), plus some other special events. For more information, call (805) 644-8413, or write to Cymbidium Congress, 4619 Vanderbilt Court, Ventura, CA 93003; https://www.cymbidium.org.

* Free monthly meetings of local branches of the Cymbidium Society of America:

Orange County--second Wednesday, year-round, 8 p.m., Garden Grove Community Meeting Center, 11300 Stanford Ave., Garden Grove.

San Diego--third Wednesday, September through June, 7 p.m., Women’s Club of Carlsbad, 3320 Monroe St., Carlsbad.

San Gabriel Valley--fourth Tuesday, September through June, 7:45 p.m., Arboretum of Los Angeles County, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia.

Santa Barbara--third Wednesday, November through May (except March), 7:30 p.m., Stewart Orchids, 3376 Foothill Road, Carpinteria.

Torrance Branch--second Tuesday, October through June, 7 p.m., at Levy Adult Education Center, 3420 229th Place, Torrance.

Westside--first Tuesday, November through May, 8 p.m., Grant Elementary School, 2425 Pearl St., Santa Monica.

The Hot New Stars Are Just Hanging Loose Cymbidiums with pendulous bloom spikes that spill down over the sides of hanging baskets are the hot ticket with hobbyists. In Ventura, George Hatfield, a vice president at avocado marketer Calavo who describes himself as an “obsessed hobbyist,” thinks that pendulous cymbidiums are “the greatest thing to happen to cymbidiums in a hundred years.”

The individual flowers on pendulous cymbidiums are much smaller--about 60% the size of standard cymbidiums. There are also more blooms per spike, and more spikes per plant. For one cymbidium show, Hatfield, an obvious booster, had to specially outfit his wife’s van to carry an amazing 10-inch hanging plant with 38 spikes drooping over its side, and a total of 754 mahogany-red flowers (they were actually counted by judges).

Unfortunately, pendulous cymbidiums are still new enough to be hard to find at regular nurseries, but they are available from time to time, especially in early spring.

Orchid specialty nurseries have them. Hobbyists are now working on additional hybrids (it takes five years to see if a hybrid is any good!), so the future of pendulous varieties looks assured. The first cymbidiums known as pendulous debuted in the orchid world during the 1970s.

Pendulous cymbidiums are usually grown in 6-inch plastic hanging pots; otherwise, they are treated like ordinary cymbidiums. However, they don’t seem to need as much sun as standard cymbidiums. Hatfield even grows his on the bright but nearly sunless north side of his house, “which is a no-no with regular cymbidiums.”

Most pendulous varieties are miniatures, about half the size of standard cymbidiums. There are also miniatures that are not pendulous and have vertical or arching spikes. All miniatures--including the pendulous kinds--tend to have more spikes and more flowers per spike, though the flowers are only 60% as large as those of a standard. --RS