ORCHID SHOW !

At the weekend the girls and I went to Orewa, to see the orchid show.
When we walked in the air smelled of honey and the colours and scents were overwhelming!
Of course Kew Gardens has nearly 22,000 species, but then you can't buy an enormous bunch for $10 and take them home.



Did you know that the number of orchids is four times the number of mammal species, and more than twice the number of bird species!



Orchids have zygomorphic flowers, ones which can can be divided into two mirror-image halves, like a person's face. They have petals of two more different shapes, sizes, and colors.



New Zealand has over 120 native orchids, over half of these are found nowhere else.
Traditionally, Māori people ate the tubers of orchids as snacks.
The tubers of the potato orchid (Gastrodia cunninghamii) were dug in winter and dried by exposure. Known as perei, they were roasted over a fire, or cooked in a steam oven.




A significant number of New Zealand orchids are rare, and some are endangered.
The rarest is the almost-black helmet orchid, which can only be found in a single Waikato swamp.



As recently as 2004, two Czech orchid growers were prosecuted for trying to smuggle native orchids out of New Zealand.
They were filmed taking orchids from a national park, and had over 100 plants when they were arrested. Boy, were they in trouble!