As a child I lived in the Amazon rainforest in northeastern Peru until my mid-teens. I would sometimes wonder what those strange plants were, up in the trees, with their roots dangling out in the air.
One time an "orchid hunter" (or so my parents called him) from the U.S. arrived in our little jungle village. He was a friendly man, but when he left, he took one of the orchids growing in one of the trees in our front yard. We didn't discover the orchid missing until a day or two after his departure.
On one occasion, my family traveled from the jungle toward the Andes Mountains. We were going to the capital of Peru, Lima, for my parents to attend a conference of some kind. In the foothills of the Andes, where the jungle crept up the sides as high as conditions would allow, in one pass through which we drove, were waterfalls streaming down the steep hillsides and cascading over jutting rocks--hundreds of small waterfalls. The growth between and around the waterfalls was lush and green. But the thing that caught my eye and amazed me were the thousands of orchids in bloom, their brilliant white petals and richly colored throats of purple and gold standing out in sharp contrast to the greens and browns of the surrounding vegetation and growing up the mountainsides as far as the eye could see.
This sight (of orchids I later discovered were cattleya rex) made an indelible impression on me, and although I live in a semi-desert now in eastern New Mexico, I began to grow orchids because of that amazement I felt when seeing all those orchids so long ago in my youth.
Now I grow a few cattleya alliance, a few phals, and am trying to learn what paphs like. I seem to have a green thumb with carnivorous plants which I grow with my orchids. I love plants.
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