Vanessa Hughes Photography: The Black Orchid and my trip to Sunset Valley Orchids

School is in full swing again for me at UCLA and I have a full course load of 20 units this quarter.

This week I have pictures from my latest trip to Sunset Valley Orchids located in Vista, CA.

I was lucky enough to meet Fred Clarke owner of SVO early on when I first caught the orchid fever and addiction. With Fred’s help my collection of three pots of cymbidiums given to me by my grandfather quickly turned into a collection of over 400 plants. I remember the first time I visited SVO. I was like a kid that got to go to Disney Land for the first time. I was hooked from then on. Before I left Fred told me I could pick one plant to take home with me. I of course chose the biggest plant from his breeders collection. At the time the plant which was some kind of purple Leila cattleya cross that stood nearly four feet tall and at least that wide with the pot was in full bloom. It goes without saying I got points for trying but went home with an equally pretty pink cattleya in a four inch pot. After that I started spending nearly every Saturday there. All this and was before my junior year of high school. While other kids were figuring out how to ditch classes I was learning about plant propagation, how to identify between each orchid species, and the difference between diploid and triploid orchids.

The difference between diploid and triploid plants is that triploid plants have an extra set of chromosomes compared to diploid or two chromosome set plants. This is not normally found in nature and is instead breed into plants. In watermelons it results in the seedless variety we all enjoy for its small nearly insignificant seeds. In orchids triploid genes makes plants larger and more robust growing. The unfortunate result is that these plants are generally sterile and cannot be reproduced by seed and thus must be cloned by plant division or in the lab.

For more information check out A Brief Look at Polyploidy By Paul Gripp

I have since sold most of my orchids but keep a much more manageable 30 of my favorites. Some have now grown to over 40 bulbs and put on a huge show of flowers each year. I still visit SVO when I can and this last week was perfect timing because Fred’s famous black orchid was in bloom.