orchid world evolution

[malteseproverb]

I'm confused by this, because people in my generation (I'm 30) are obsessed with house plants, and many are willing to spend a lot of money for the latest trendy plant. You'd think that the internet would make it easier for people to learn about and buy orchids. You don't need an e-commerce website, all you need is Instagram and a Paypal account to sell plants. You can order sphagnum, net pots, and LED lighting on Amazon with a click of a button--no need to seek them out at specialty shops that may not exist in your area. OrchidGirl is making a living just by owning orchids and taking videos of them.

I understand there seems to have been a lot of people who had an interest in orchids that are now aging. The woman who got me into orchids passed away a year ago--she was 90. Is the issue just that the next generation of orchid growers are unwilling to become small business owners or do the hard work of maintaining a nursery? Is it something about the fact that learning to grow orchids expertly requires a lot experience over many years and we don't have the time or patience? Are older growers not passing on their knowledge to those that could succeed them?

I'm curious how people found out about orchids and got into the hobby or learned to grow them before the internet. Was there a trend in the 70s or something?

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by malteseproverb

I'm curious how people found out about orchids and got into the hobby or learned to grow them before the internet. Was there a trend in the 70s or something?

I had a couple of friends where their parents had green houses --- way back in my high school days. They had orchids and nepenthes pitcher plants. Once seeing flowers of orchids, and pitchers of pitcher plants ----- I'm sure their interesting qualities will automatically attract or entice certain people (including me) to want to grow them as well. The additional interesting features about these plants - once we learn more about them - makes them even extra interesting. That's how I got into orchids. Their variety in plant variations, and flower variety - colours, shapes, etc ...... automatically and naturally draw people in to like them and grow them.

Being able to learn to maintain the orchids, and keeping them healthy is something else that adds to the joy, challenge, satisfaction etc.

I like orchids ---- because I just like them. I really like them - just like most of us here on this forum does.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by malteseproverb

I'm curious how people found out about orchids and got into the hobby or learned to grow them before the internet. Was there a trend in the 70s or something?

My mother always had tropical houseplants about, and I guess it rubbed off on me. When I was in college in Atlanta, I volunteered at the public greenhouses in Piedmont Park (now the Atlanta Botanical Garden), working in a large greenhouse that was a rainforest at one end and a desert at the other. Adjacent to it was another greenhouse full of odd-looking plants that sometimes flowered.

After about a year, I was invited to help in there, and sometime later, the grower gave me one of the odd-looking plants, a big, "floofy" cattleya hybrid.

The rest is history.

[MrHappyRotter]

Originally Posted by malteseproverb

I'm confused by this...

I don't actually believe that newer generations are lazier or dumber or more impatient or less interested in these types of things, I just think that these are very different times compared to earlier decades.

Think of it like this. Let's say you want to make a bit above the poverty level in the USA, so maybe $25,000 a year. Even if your average profit margin on an orchid is $10 (to be clear this is a large margin for anything but high end orchids), you'd need to sell close to 50 orchids a week to reach that $25,000. Keep in mind, this entails working long hours 7 days a week, so it means you're probably earning much less than minimum wage for your efforts.

With college debt, medical debt, housing costs and other expenses being what they are, a lot of young people simply don't have the money or credit to start a risky, low-profit business and they have to stick with more stable, secure forms of income. Even as a side job, selling orchids is time consuming, it's almost certainly going to be more lucrative to go wait tables or drive for a ride share company if those are options for you, so anybody doing it is most likely not doing it for the profit.

In terms of social media, the personalities making a living off YouTube, Instagram, etc are the outliers, the proverbial lottery winners, they aren't the norm. Not everyone can do it, and most won't be successful. Not to mention that selling in volume on various social media platforms is time consuming in and of itself, reliant on having a decent following, and your ability to sell and make money is at the whim of the platform itself.

[estación seca]

As to how people learned before the Internet: People have always been curious about new things, and sought them out.

Most metro areas had / have garden shows or fairs in a huge display area. These were always well attended. Vendors brought exotic things to sell, and local plant clubs had exhibits. Club newsletters were full of important growing information. Many of these local plant groups were/are affiliated with national societies that published journals. The day the journal arrived with new information was eagerly awaited.

Public libraries were the only storehouses of knowledge. At a time when books with photos were very expensive, people interested in plants could read through every plant book in the library. Certain English-language encyclopedic tropical plant books with lots of color photos were probably read over and over again by most US plant lovers.

Paper plant catalogs generally contained far more useful information than online listings do today. The fact that something printed on paper is difficult to change for the next version made people think long and hard about what they wrote before sending it to the printer.

Telephone conversations to other States and countries were so expensive they were essentially beyond the reach of middle-class citizens. Almost all correspondence was via surface mail.

The difficulty of, and long time frames for, communicating, mostly screened out trolls and the slightly interested. Vendors treated customers better; everybody realized how much work was involved just to write a letter requesting to be put on a catalog mailing list.

Most problems after shipping were handled by surface mail, as well.

[plantzzzzz]

Originally Posted by malteseproverb

I'm confused by this, because people in my generation (I'm 30) are obsessed with house plants, and many are willing to spend a lot of money for the latest trendy plant. You'd think that the internet would make it easier for people to learn about and buy orchids. You don't need an e-commerce website, all you need is Instagram and a Paypal account to sell plants. You can order sphagnum, net pots, and LED lighting on Amazon with a click of a button--no need to seek them out at specialty shops that may not exist in your area. OrchidGirl is making a living just by owning orchids and taking videos of them.

I understand there seems to have been a lot of people who had an interest in orchids that are now aging. The woman who got me into orchids passed away a year ago--she was 90. Is the issue just that the next generation of orchid growers are unwilling to become small business owners or do the hard work of maintaining a nursery? Is it something about the fact that learning to grow orchids expertly requires a lot experience over many years and we don't have the time or patience? Are older growers not passing on their knowledge to those that could succeed them?

I'm curious how people found out about orchids and got into the hobby or learned to grow them before the internet. Was there a trend in the 70s or something?

I am 24 and I share this sentiment. A lot of people I know are fascinated by all of the plants I grow, but the orchid community remains primarily a hobby for those over 40.

I think that there's three reasons:

- The time, stability, and funds it requires to have a plant collection. That isn't something that my generation really has, or even wants. The reason I'm able to have a large plant collection is my relatively stable, cheap, living situation, lack of student debt, and extremely flexible work hours. Several hundred dollars isn't a lot to spend on a hobby, but it does mean that it's very hard for me to pick up and move, like many of my friends are doing for their careers.

- The insularity of the orchid (and plant) growing community, and the general mysticism that surrounds plants, which I think is perpetuated by the greater "instagram houseplant grower" community. No plant is really hard to grow. They have required conditions, and either you provide them or you don't. In order to sell plants to my generation, you need to do a lot of education and outreach. Understandably, most vendors are not interested in having proselytize for their product.

- Buying orchids is almost entirely through ancient websites. In order to get interesting, reasonably priced plants here in Canada you essentially have to have a personal email correspondence with growers. It also feels like some of the vendors aimed at a younger audience are intentionally withholding information to sell their plants for more. You can buy a small pleurothallid from a hip "build-your-own-terrarium" vendor in Toronto for $120, who will tell you it's the rarest thing on the planet, or you can buy it from ecuagenera for $15.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by plantzzzzz

No plant is really hard to grow. They have required conditions, and either you provide them or you don't.

The above is true. I agree - even though I think that 'hard to grow' can also imply the amount of effort, time, work, money, equipment etc. needed to provide specific conditions and growing requirements.

[SundayGardener]

For those of you who are younger than 40 and willing to $$pend for plants...are you mainly buying online, or do you try to be local when possible?

We had a small local orchid nursery (before my time). The owner retired. The new owners tried to continue, but I was sad to learn that they gave up and are now focusing on standard houseplants and landscaping. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because there are no shortage of other nurseries providing the usual houseplants and landscaping services.

I listened to what they had to say...that they couldn't compete with the Big Box (Home Depots) on price and were ending up having to sell at cost...that they couldn't sell an orchid if it wasn't blooming...problems with changes in ownership of the places from which they purchased orchids and so on. The thing is, they did sell a lot of blooming phals year-round, but always NOID. So if it comes down to that, I myself wouldn't be willing to pay more for a NOID from a nursery if I can get it cheaper elsewhere because a NOID is a NOID. In the year and a half that I shopped there, they typically had a seasonal selection of big blooming orchids, and then more of a backroom selection of small species and hybrids (with ids) (one of which, over a year later, I can now say proudly is in spike). I bought several non-blooming orchids with IDs. But towards the end as their inventory was dwindling, the quality of what was left was poor with no reduction in price.

They shifted to air plants, succulents and fairy garden plants, but I think the interest in these is already waning. I've noticed that nurseries are not as good as Home Depot at jumping on a trend.

For myself, I buy indoor plants from nurseries. Having seen all the local nurseries in my childhood home town shut down, I try to be supportive of the nurseries that remain where I live now. If they want to hear it, I'll tell them what I'm interested in and would be willing to spend money on. For instance, I still have to buy most orchid pots & potting supplies online which is ridiculous! The local orchid people have been leaning hard on the hydroponic stores to be more accommodating, and they stock orchiata but that's about it. Too often what I see is a tentative investment in a handful of blooming orchid plants, and if they don't sell, or if people complain about not being able to keep them alive, the nurseries write it off as a bad idea

[Dollythehun]

I've been trying to be quiet lately as my opinions seem wrong or disregarded, however... Having been in the growing business small scale, I want to defend that nursery.

As a small operation, it IS difficult to compete with Big Box stores. What you have that they don't is knowledge, you have to creatively sell that. It is hard to buy a small quantity of any given plant. It took me a long to long time to gather good sources and develop relationships with suppliers. When you're busy trying to keep it together, it's easy to let your care slip. And, that can happen very quickly. Also, the public is very fickle and hard to work with. I learned if I ran out of something "hot" not to order it again... By the time I'd received it, it was no longer hot. And good help, good luck.

So, cut them some slack, it's much harder, (and can be more rewarding) than you might guess. Still, I was always in the black and learned a lot about myself and others.

[malteseproverb]

I almost exclusively buy in person, either at nurseries specializing in orchids or at the annual SEPOS orchid show. There used to be an orchid nursery very close to me that I frequently visited, but the owners both died a couple years ago and their children sold everything. I've only used online vendors to purchase catasetums, as no one seems to sell them in my area or at the SEPOS orchid show, but I don't like buying online. I want to see the plant and pick it out based on how healthy it looks. I prefer this to hunting down specific plants and keeping a wish list. I don't grow phals so I'm not going to Home Depot for my orchids. If I went to an orchid nursery and it was just phals I would turn around and leave. Plant shops in my city occasionally sell paphs or dendrobiums for like $65 so I would never purchase them there. I also mainly buy my supplies at the orchid show because I don't want to pay for shipping and they have everything I need for the year.

I'm part of a facebook group for plant growers in my city, and I've been keeping an eye on the plant trends. People in my area still seem gung-ho about succulents. Everyone is consumed with lust for monsteras. Variegated anything makes the crowds go wild. Orchids are conspicuously not on anyone's to-buy list. People will ooh and aaah when a flower photo is taken but don't have an interest in learning their care. The weirdest thing I've noticed is that casual phal growers are SO obsessed with using 'full water culture.' Whenever anyone posts about a phal issue, I give standard "phal abuse ends here" style advice, but it is mainly ignored, and then someone will respond advising the poster to try FWC and the OP will immediately jump on that and decide to try it out. There's a water culture orchid facebook group that is often linked to. I'm curious if anyone else is seeing this interest in water culture? Seems to be appealing to those who have phal troubles for some reason.

Anyway my desire to shop locally is not ethically motivated but more so because I am lazy, don't have a car, and want to make sure these places stay open in areas accessible to me. Additionally, I've been burned by buying plants online before, and it's just not as thrilling as finding a cool plant (blooming or non blooming!) and taking it home right away.