ORCHIDS!

Sunday Marty and I went to the Orchid Show in San Francisco.  This is the biggest orchid show in the USA.  We go every year saying we won't buy any this time.  Now that we are in an apartment with little outdoor space we really meant it.  Well until we walked through the sales floor.

I have eliminated 80+ pictures and have less than 20 to share.  That was the hard part of this post.  So much beauty, how do I tell an orchid I don't love it enough to show you all?

 

 

The theme of the show.  Very few exhibits did much with the theme.  Other years have had very lavish exhibits.

 

 

This one understood the theme.

 

 

Besides the trumpet, they had a flute and a sax.  No one played any jazz at their exhibit.

 

 

Posted because it is really pretty.

 

 

Loved this three large petal white bloom. 

 

 

We wanted to buy a pink plant like this one.  They were rarer than white ones and were sold out.  So we bought a white one.  Again we liked the unusual three petals.  These are pointier than the picture before this.

 

 

The design on the orchid on the left is unreal.  Mother Nature has such a genius for design.

 

 

This a the exhibit from Taiwan.  As I took the panoramic picture someone evidently moved.  So ignore the error.  This is all I have.  The beauty is worth overlooking the error.

 

 

Beauty sometime comes in very small packages.

 

 

Cattleyas are called the queen of orchids.  This is the flower we all wanted in a corsage for Easter, for the Christmas dance, for the Senior prom.    

 

 

Marty held a ball point pen against a bloom to show how small it was.  I was blown away with how dark the color was.

 

 

The colors of these plants were in your face.  Yellows, reds, oranges, and then the white with purple dancing between them. 

 

 

I loved this.  I wanted it.

 

And I want these, they were twice as big as the picture before.

 

 

Can you tell how much I like these?  Unfortunately they are fairly scarce and few vendors had any for sale.  They had sold all of the few they had.  Maybe next year.

 

 

Marty on the lookout for the curly orchids.  We did find some other types to bring home.

 

 

The orchids we bought. 

 

Many plants were bare rooted, so not as expensive. Others were from Hawaii and Taiwan and they were cut in price.  The vendors did not want to have to pay for shipping them back home.  Prices on the last day at certain vendors are half price or buy three get one free.  All of these have bloom spikes or buds coming.  Some are miniature plants and the rest will remain fairly small.  Even in an apartment you can have exotic plants.