Celebrating National Orchid Day with Orchid Lovers

"Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer;
they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components."

Today is National Orchid Day.

It has been observed annually on April 16th since 2015.

Orchids are my new go-to order from the florist.

If I need to give a gift, I’ll send an orchid because they are so long-lived and simply spectacular.

Orchids are an obsession for many gardeners.

I remember the first time I witnessed an Orchid reblooming after caring for it for months. I had not done much to care for it aside from repotting it and watering it. But still, the sense of satisfaction and that glorious month-long bloom... I was hooked.

The great Enid Haupt, also known as "the fairy godmother of American horticulture," fell in love with orchids when her future husband, Ira Haupt, gifted her with a Cymbidium Orchid. It immediately enthralled Enid, and she began a life-long love affair with orchids.

And I love what the American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian Stephen Jay Gould once wrote about Orchids:

Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions.

Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.

Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.