Went to the Conservatory before it opened last Saturday and had a delightful walk through the 2012 Orchid Show at NYBG. This year, the show features the vertical gardens or "walls" of French botanist and artist, Patrick Blanc. Vertical surfaces covered with a proliferation of orchids, ferns, epiphytes; splashes of color amidst a carpet of green; thousands and thousands of some of the most beautiful, evocative, and evolutionarily-advanced flowers you can imagine. Really gorgeous.
That said, the subtlety and wonder afforded by the careful study of single orchid is somehow lost for me when these amazing flowers are presented in such large numbers. I mean, really, check out the incomparable reproductive structure shown below. How much more sensual could a pollinator-attracting device get? [NOTE: The Orchid Show continues at The New York Botanical Garden until April 22].
