"What frightful trouble you have taken about Vanilla; you really must not take an atom more; for the orchids are more play than real work"    

-Charles Darwin in letter to colleague William Hooker   

  As I am preparing for this year’s Orchid Mania exhibit  opening February 27, I wanted to share some history of one very interesting and perhaps most economically important orchid species, Vanilla planifolia. The vanilla orchid is peculiar because it grows like a vine. The fermented seedpods are the source of the flavoring vanillin.

        Vanilla and chocolate have a long history together and have been together long before the invention of ice cream.  One of the earliest record of the use of the vanilla bean dates back as far early 1400’s when vanilla beans along with cacao seeds, from which chocolate is derived, were part of tributes paid by the Totonacs and other Central American tribes to the Aztecs. The Aztecs, Mayans, and other Central American natives used vanilla almost exclusively to flavor and perfume a popular beverage prepared from cacao seeds. 

      In the early 1500’s, vanilla, along with its chocolate beverage, was introduced in Europe and became popular among the wealthy. It wasn’t until 1602 that Hugh Morgan, pharmacist to Queen Elizabeth I, suggested that vanilla could have other uses besides being a flavoring for chocolate. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, brought Vanilla to the U.S. from Paris along with a recipe for vanilla ice cream. His hand written recipe can be found in the Library of Congress.

          Many attempts were made to grow vanilla outside of Central America in the first three centuries after its discovery, but the orchids never bore fruit. In 1838, Charles Morren discovered that only bees of the genus Eulaema pollinated the flowers, and they could not survive outside of Mexico. Three years later a suitable method of hand pollination was discovered that allowed vanilla production to spread across the globe. In 1858, vanillin was isolated opening the way for the creation of artificial vanilla.

 Posted by Nate Tschaenn

                Ants are like the mercenaries of the plant world. If given a reward, they will fight to protect plants from grazing animals and insect pests. On the other hand, if the price is right, ants can also be found aiding the sap-sucking insects that feed on plants. With their great numbers and impressive strength given their size, they are certainly a formidable army. So what does it take to have an army of ants on your side? 

                 Well, if you were a plant, one of the best things you could do to bribe a colony of ants into protecting you is to provide them with a home. Many plants have specialized structures called "domatia" in which certain species of ants form colonies. These can be hollowed-out structures like stems, petioles, or spines or cavities and chambers in swollen roots and caudices. As anyone who has ever accidently stepped on a fire ant nest can tell you, ants will aggressively protect their homes.

This ant plant, Hydnophytum, has been cut open to show the chambers used by some species of ants as a nest. photograph © Alex Wild 2004	Cross section of a hollow acacia thorn. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Cross section of cecropia branch show ants nesting in the hollow internodes.  photograph © Alex Wild 2007

                  Another method that plants use to attract ant guardians is supplying them with food. There are many different examples of plants that provide ants with nectar in extrafloral nectaries. Extrafloral nectaries are special glands that produce nectar outside of flowers. Providing ants with their own nectar source also has the benefit of keeping them out of the flowers so that they do not interfere with pollination. In addition to nectar, some plants even produce specialized food bodies that ants can collect and store in their nests.  

Extra floral nectary on the leaf of an inga tree. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Ants collecting protein rich food bodies from an acacia tree. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Food bodies produced a cecropia tree at the bass of the leaves.   photograph © Alex Wild 2007

            Of course, with upwards of 10,000 different ant species, not all of them are plant friendly. There are many ant species that  harm plants by aiding the sap-sucking insect enemies of plants. The insects have something ants want that is just waste to them, literally. Ants actually eat the sugary substance known as "honeydew" that is excreted from a variety of sap-sucking insects. In what is often referred to as "farming," ants will protect their insect livestock, overwinter them in their underground nests, move and position them around a plant, and even "milk" some types of insects by coaxing them into producing honeydew. Unfortunately, we see more of these enemy ants in greenhouses. It can be a real problem trying to control pests with beneficial insects because they will protect their livestock from insect predators.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

        I’m sure many a Clevelander is affected in some way by the lack of sunlight during the winter months. Even working in a glasshouse, I still miss the full effect of the summer sun .  This time of year the Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glasshouse is still dark for the first hour that I am at work every morning, and even on the few days that it is not completely overcast, the light intensity is still noticeably less than in summer. Looking around the Costa Rica biome in which I work, it is apparent that I am not the only one missing the summer sun.

 Even the warm, wet, tropical growing environment does not spare the Costa Rica biome from plant dormancy. Plants respond to the reduction in sunlight and slow down their growth or stop altogether. Some trees will lose many or all of their leaves for a couple of months. Some plants even disappear from exhibit all together this time of the year and return again in spring when conditions are more favorable. This is the case with Maranta arundinacea or arrowroot.

    Arrowroot is the first plant to go completely dormant and has been hiding underground waiting for spring for several weeks now. New growth will reemerge in spring from rhizomes and tubers produced during the growing season. The tubers resemble white carrots and can be made into arrowroot powder, which is used in cooking.

    Heliconias, calatheas, ginger (Costus), and a number of gesneriads also produce rhizomes. Although most of them don’t go completely dormant, there is a definite lack of growth and a number of yellowing leaves before new shoots begin to grow from the rhizomes in spring.

Arrowroot tubers	Diastema comiferum	Scaly rhizomes of dormant Diastema

          This time of year corresponds with the dry season in Costa Rica. The rainforests are not as green at this time of the year but the canopy opens up, the orchids are blooming and also more visible, and many of the trees will bloom during this time, some while they are completely leafless.  

            Even though there may not be as many leafy greens in the Costa Rican exhibit as during the summer,  it is still an excellent escape from the cold winter weather. Even while some plants go dormant others come into bloom this time of the year, particularly orchids. You certainly don’t want to miss OrchidMania in March or our amaryllis display going on now.

Here are a few pics of plants in bloom right now:

This sleepy mallow, Malvaviscus arboreus, gets its name from the flowers which never quite open all the way.	This blooming browmeliad is filling in for a dormant arrowroot.	One of my favorite gesneriads, this Kohleria spicata, produces long spikes of red flowers.
Oncidium ‘Twinkle’ - This extremely fragrant orchid can be found blooming throughout the exhibit this time of year.	Panama rose, Rondeletia leucophylla- This shrub is my favorite winter bloomer. Blooms heavily for months starting in late December.	Laelia anceps - The first of several laelia orchids to start blooming this season.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

Every May, we have been lucky to host 1-3 high school students completing their senior projects. These interns come from Brush High School, Shaker Heights High, Walsh Jesuit, Hathaway Brown and other schools, and they are completing 100 hours of service with us. The students fulfill their graduation requirements, and we get several extra pairs of helpful hands to assist us through one of the craziest times of our year – we hosted over 3,500 students at the Garden this past May! Here are two entries from our most recent senior project students. They were a huge help to us and I think they got something out of the experience. But you can make the call for yourself:

Anna McDonough:

“Walking feet, indoor voices, and please don’t touch the butterflies!!”  These are some simple rules for wide-eyed Pre-K to 8^th grade school children visiting the Garden on an education program.  The daily hustle and bustle of school groups from Cleveland and its suburbs keep Garden employees and volunteers on their toes. Although the job is a lot of work, everyone seems to love every moment of it. 

I never realized how much work went into an established business until I started my senior project here mid-May.  I volunteered for about three weeks, and in that time I got to see kids get excited about plants.  Witnessing kids light up when they’ve learned something new is honestly the most rewarding experience.  It’s for these moments that I decided to pursue a career in teaching.  

Cleveland Botanical Garden is the best environment for all ages to learn about plants or just plain relax and drink in all of the oxygen.  I’ve never seen an unhappy face, unless of course the forecast for the afternoon is a heavy downpour. 

Kirsten Pianka:

I decided to do my Senior Project at Cleveland Botanical Garden to gain experience with plants and learn about the environment. However, I ended up garnering a much stronger knowledge about the people who work and visit here everyday. Around my second day here, I came to the realization that everyone at the garden is really nice. I can walk into a different section of the Garden and be greeted with a smiling face and a friendly hello. I have yet to meet a grumpy employee or volunteer, and I think it is safe to say that a universal feeling of contentment has swept over this place and made everyone like their jobs.

And though the large masses of school groups that swarm through the gardens can at times be overwhelming, they are greeted with open arms by Garden employees and volunteers. I’ve learned that dealing with children is less scary than I imagined (they are not the hostile creatures I envisioned) and that they truly enjoy the beauty of the gardens, the variety of plants in the Glasshouse, and the creative activities available in the Hershey Children’s Garden. The best part of my day is when I get a friendly wave from a student who has had a fun-filled day of exploration and learning. Unbeknownst to these students, they have taught me more than I ever thought I could learn from a rambunctious group of preschoolers.

Wow! I can’t believe that we are currently installing our sixth orchid show! It’s been incredibly popular over the years and for the first time, we’ll be staging a large part of the show in the Glasshouse.  This year we will be exhibiting new orchids that are gorgeous, fragrant, and unique. It never ceases to surprise me how orchid breeders create ever more beautiful and coloful flowers. When we open the boxes of orchids, it’s like Christmas all over again! Just this afternoon as I was going through the new arrivals, I was beginning to chose which ones I want to buy after the show is complete. With orchids, you can never have just one! The Orchid Show will be open beginning this Saturday, Feb 28th, so if you’re in need of warmth, color and sweet scents, the Botanical Garden is the only place in Cleveland that will satisfy you!

I just love the chartreuse colors on this Cattleya-type orchid.

Principle Six: Small Worlds

I am currently writing a series of post, applying the design concepts David Sobel outlines in his book "Childhood and Nature" to what we do in Hershey Children’s Garden. This is important reading not only if you are designing a garden space, program or activity, but also for environmental educators and parents alike.

Children and adults alike seem naturally drawn to doll houses, model train sets or sand boxes, to worlds in miniature. "Through creating miniature representations of ecosystems or neighborhoods, we help children conceptually grasp the big picture. . .a concrete vehicle for understanding abstract ideas," writes Sobel. Small worlds are simplified, more accessible as all the parts are there in one snap shot.

There are numerous small worlds through out Hershey Children’s Garden. Again, scale is the critical design principle here. Try to convey the concept of habitats in general or wetland systems specifically to a four year old. We do walking through the small prairie, woodland or when dipping fingers in the pond. Food, shelter, water and a place to raise young are all right there in one view.

Parents and teachers can create similar experiences by planting a butterfly garden or building miniature versions of various habitat types using natural materials for example. Actually, just give a child a large cardboard box and room to themselves and whole worlds will unfold before one’s eyes.

It all started in the late fall of 2007. I had recently been hired as a glasshouse specialist at Cleveland Botanical Garden, charged with maintaining and developing the Neotropical collections of the Costa Rican exhibit. I was constantly researching new plants, looking for ways to improve our collection. In particular I was looking for small plants that could flower in filtered light. In my search I kept coming back to the family Gesneriaceae.

I decided that the few species of gesneriads in our collection did not properly represent the numbers and diversity found in the New World tropics. The Gesneriad Society website was a helpful source of information, and then I saw the fantastic number of species gesneriads available through the Seed Fund.

I always enjoyed growing plants from seed, and there was something particularly exciting about growing gesneriads from seed. Perhaps it is the microscopic size of the seeds. The more I learned from the GESNERIADS journal and other publications, the more excited I became. Seeing the possibilities for improvements in my exhibit, I decided to attend the convention in Denver in order to purchase plants and learn more.

All the members at the convention were very friendly and welcoming. Everyone I spoke with seemed interested and even excited about the plans I had for my exhibit, and I received many offers of assistance. It was delightful to be around so many people who were passionate about plants, especially a particular family of plants, and the passion was contagious. I returned from the convention with a duffle bag full of plants and an even greater excitement to begin some of the projects for which I had been planning to use them.

With my budding collection happily growing in our orchid greenhouse, I was ready to begin adding them to our permanent display. I had designed a plan to reconstruct one of my planting beds from its original long gradual slope into a much steeper slope and to interplant the slope with gesneriads, ferns, and other similar plants. After adding over 100 bags of soil and some large rocks to the area, I was finally able to begin planting. Many of the gesneriads were planted on this slope, which I started to call "Gesneriad Hill", while others were mixed in the rest of the exhibit. The Columneas made fantastic additions to our epiphyte collections and are now planted on tree trunks and branches throughout the biome.

The new additions to the Costa Rica collection have been well received here at Cleveland Botanical Garden. I have received numerous comments from staff, volunteers, and visitors about how nice the gesneriad slope looks. The gesneriads have become some of my favorite plants in the exhibit, and I would like to thank everyone at the convention who offered their help and support by providing me information and even donating plants or cuttings. I look forward to sharing with others the joys of growing them and continuing to learn more about them as our collection grows. 
 

As generation X and Y get older, buy houses and begin to landscape, trends have been emerging as to what they prefer in their backyards. Low maintenance, high impact plantings are definitely popular as is outdoor kichens and edible and organic gardening to name only a few observations. Still, there is demand for the latest cultivars that plant breeders create- bigger, more colorful, diesase resistant plants. Among botanical gardens, the movement is toward edible and low maintenance gardens. As farmer’s markets proliferate and people buy more locally, growing victory gardens is becoming vogue again. Given that we are an educational institution and seeing the current trends, I wonder if the public would be interested in seeing an edible garden that is also aesthetically beautful? 

Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ in the Campsey-Stauffer Gateway Garden

 Posted by Cynthia Druckenbrod

The sight and scent of black elderberry in the Herb Garden give me a momentary touch of vertigo. The flower clusters covering the towering shrub in creamy-white domes, buzzing with bees of all kinds, just epitomize summer for me. It seems odd but wonderful to stand next to them in the heart of University Circle, with Severance Hall, the Peter B. Lewis Building and the Museum of Art radiating culture and sophistication a few yards away.

Posted by Ann McCulloh

I recently read that the Phalaenopsis (Moth) Orchid is the second most popular house plant in the U.S. preceded only by the Poinsettia. And that makes perfect sense since I see Moth Orchids everywhere: the grocery store, the big box stores, garden centers, etc. What I find unfortunate is that many of these orchids are now treated as throw-away plants. Once the orchid is finished blooming, why keep it? I disagree. Moth Orchids are incredibly beautiful and easy to grow and can be kept in a typical windowsill, providing years of blooms. All you need to do is provide light from an east or west window, water once per week, sometimes twice, fertilize every other week and re-pot it every two years. If you’re not familiar with growing these orchids, that’s just another reason to come to the Garden this Feb. to learn how you can grow colorful Moth Orchids.

Posted by Cynthia Druckenbrod