Dancing girls of Olavipe

The dancing starts a little ahead of noon when breeze rises from the Olavipe Lake. The yellow skirted ‘girls’ begin moving in rhythm. The tempo picks up as the wind becomes stronger. The performance continues till sunset when the breeze dies down.

I am talking about the orchids known as Dancing Girls/Lady. The Latin name is oncidium splendidum. It is also called Golden Shower orchid. What we have at Olavipe is yellow. The sprays of yellow and brown flowers are small and give an image of dancing girls in skirts. Given below is a photo I took recently.

Click on image for enlarged view

Feel the flowers are out of focus? I think differently. Most of the photos of orchids I looked up were cut flowers or still plants. When I took this picture the girls were dancing in the strong afternoon breeze. Perhaps that resulted in the ethereal impression. I consider it is appropriate and brings out the spirit of the dancing girls.

Oncidiums are easy to grow and do not require a great deal of care. Our Dancing girls are potted in dried coconut husk filled with broken clay tiles and charcoal. They are hung on the coconut palm seen on the left of the photo. Watering and indirect sunlight are required. It has tolerance to altitudes and temperatures.

Have a few Dancing Girls at home. They are beautiful.

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Also see:

An orchid from Olavipe

Photos: Flowers from Switzerland

An orchid from Olavipe

I am particularly proud of this photo which I took at Olavipe last month. The credit for it, however, goes to the idiot proof camera that I used to shoot it.

Two orchids like the one in the picture were found on the rotten branch of an ancient mango tree near our western gate. No idea how old the tree is. Several of its branches had been cut down for cremating some of our Hindu neighbours when they died. But this one broke and fell down.

How and from where did the orchids come on the tree? None of us has seen an orchid of this type anywhere in the area. Anyway, since the plants were found on a tree, they are epiphytes. An epiphyte anchors on to trees or shrubs, and according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain”. This means that they are not parasites.They grow mostly in tropical forests.

Out of the many species of orchids (estimated number 25000 to 50000) , a major portion are epiphytes. The other type is terrestrial which root in soil. There are two more categories, lithophytes which grow on rocky terrain and saprophytes (mycoheterotrophs) which thrive on decaying plant matter. A photo of a terrestrial orchid, also taken by me at Olavipe, is given below:

The size of orchid plants, depending on the species, can be anywhere from tiny to several feet in height. The general impression is that they grow only in the tropics. This is not correct. Orchids can be found in most parts of the world. Some of them however are endemic; they are seen only in a particular region. Many new species are being created on a continuing basis by cross pollination. Quite a few of such orchids are very popular.

Orchids are commercially important, essentially for the flowers. That is big business. The vanilla genus is a perennial favorite as food flavouring. A powder, made by grinding the tubers of certain terrestrial orchids is also used in cooking. Perfumers keep checking the scent of the orchids for possible use in cosmetics.

Coming back to the Olavipe orchid, we have made the aerial genus into a terrestrial one by potting it. Orchids are said to have enough adaptability for such conversion. I hope this is true.

Orchids are the prettiest among all flowers. The very word orchid is synonymous with exotic beauty. They may be rather fussy to cultivate, but the effort is truly worthwhile.

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Also see: Photos: Electric blue flowers