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June 2001 Wild beauties for the back yard A few native orchids are easy to grow in your garden, but most take coaxing, patience and a spirit of experimentation. I.E. Sadowski The pink lady's-slipper. © Donna & Tom Krischan

Ever been charmed by lady's-slippers or grass-pinks on a spring hike and wish they could add a grace note to your garden's symphony of colors and shapes? It's only natural for native plant enthusiasts to wonder if it's possible to grow these beguiling wild orchids back home.

The good news is, it can be done – provided you select the right species. Given the proper conditions, some orchids will flourish like burdock in a burnt field. Others will demand nothing less than years of complete subservience and total devotion in return for a brief but stunning appearance.

Creating orchid habitat

Reputed as rarities, orchids actually comprise the second biggest family among the flowering plants, boasting 725 genera and 10,000 to 15,000 different species. Representatives from 18 genera can be found in Wisconsin. Their leaves can resemble blades of grass or the foliage of lilies and irises, to which orchids are related.

Observing wild habitat and fostering similar conditions in the back yard is the key to growing orchids at home. Wisconsin orchid habitat varies from the rich oak forests of the south to acidic cedar bogs up north to the limestone swales of Door County.

"I usually say there's an orchid for every habitat in Wisconsin," says Scott Weber of Bluestem Farms, a native plant nursery in Baraboo. Many orchids choose to bloom in humid spots, with moisture aplenty. Several other species of Wisconsin orchids grow in dry habitats: autumn coral root, moccasin flower, rattlesnake plantains and some of the ladies'- tresses, for instance. Ram's head lady's-slipper, for example, grows in wet or dry habitat – it's the pH and other soil conditions that are critical for its growth.

The seeds of many orchid species lie dormant for years, just waiting for prime conditions. Weber says that even former pasture can yield surprises. He saw clumps of yellow lady's-slippers return to a Columbia County field once drain tiles were broken and groundwater levels rose.

Although orchids have a dainty reputation, some are opportunists that thrive in disturbed environments. Perky grass-pinks, for instance, may carpet ditches scraped by highway crews to keep the weeds down. Until conditions are right, some orchids lie dormant and may not bloom for 5 to 15 years, notes Thomas Meyer, DNR conservation biologist with the State Natural Areas program.

"Grass-pinks are actually fairly common in wet, acid sands in central Wisconsin, " Meyer says. "If you see roadsides where it's really low, it's the old glacial lakebed. Some of the roadside maintenance done by town and county crews may actually improve habitat for a species like that by exposing the wet, sandy soil and reducing the competition from other plants."

Given a chance, some orchids will grow like weeds. Weber says twayblade corms (the underground stem that bears new plants) seem to pop up whenever ground is turned to expand his garden beds. The nodding ladies'-tresses orchid, a fringy affair when fully grown, sows itself into flats in his greenhouses.

Fire helps orchids thrive against the competition. Weber notes ladies'-tresses, grass-pinks, and lady's-slippers respond well to fire, while evergreen species like rattlesnake plantain do not. "The biggest problem may be encroaching brush," Weber explains. "Fire seems to stimulate most orchids. So some kind of prescribed burn program on a large area helps."

Both grass-pinks and yellow lady's-slippers are pretty and tough enough to transplant for the garden or patio. Weber would like to see grass-pinks catch on as container plants. The corms are easy to grow in sandy acidic soils and will bloom yearly if cooled in a fridge during the winter months.

Gene Smalley, orchid enthusiast and professor emeritus of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agrees that the grass-pink is reliable. He also recommends rattlesnake plantain for the garden.

"I've had big success with Goodyera," he says. "It's a very pretty plant with variegated leaves that looks good even without blooms."

Smalley points out that providing the right habitat is essential to success. "To keep plants going, I locate places where I can satisfy most of their requirements," he says. Sometimes Smalley will do a little site preparation before transplanting. To accommodate a showy lady's-slipper, he worked in a lot of fine silica blasting sand before planting the orchid near a downspout in his front yard.

"Up in Door County they grow along the beaches," he says. "There's hardly any organic material in that stuff. But their feet are sort of right at the water table." Other orchids, like the pink and yellow lady's-slippers, can handle drier locations with a bit of sun and good humus.

Smalley's experiments in propagation focus mainly on lady's-slippers, especially Cypripedium reginae ."The showy lady's-slippers are the easiest to work with," he says. With puffy blows blushing with colored veins to attract pollinating insects, these flowers certainly live up to their name. They also hybridize readily. Smalley has crossed species of Cypripedium with their subtropical cousins that are gaining popularity as houseplants.

While orchids can be particular about growing conditions or pollinators, loss of habitat is often the engine driving their scarcity. The federally-threatened Eastern prairie white-fringed orchid became rare because the moist prairie it calls home has almost disappeared from the Wisconsin landscape. The state-threatened white lady's-slipper frequents the fens and wet prairies that used to ring the southern end of Lake Michigan. The rich, tillable soils of mesic prairies, an incredible 10-feet deep in places, was simply too alluring to settlers as agricultural land, not to mention as residential and industrial property. Plentiful at the turn of the1900s, merchants loaded up wagonfuls of blooming orchids to sell for a penny a piece in Milwaukee and Chicago.

Growing your own at home

To begin propagating orchids at home, you can raise them from seed, transplant existing plants, or purchase plants from a nursery. Collecting plants or seed requires the owner's permission on private land and is illegal on public land without a permit. One seedpod can offer a million chances for germination, so growers trade seed among themselves using networks like the Orchid Growers Guild. Joining the guild could also offer some guidance when embarking on growing orchids from seed.

In general, overseeing germination and the early years of a plant's life is not for the faint of heart. Balancing sterile growing media with nutritional requirements, keeping the plant on its normal life cycle complete with cold periods, and maintaining humidity are some of the rigors involved.

Orchid clumps may be rescued – with permission from property owners – from sites that are about to be disturbed by roadwork or construction. Realistically though, few survive transplanting to a garden for even a few years because the transplant site often can't meet the orchids exacting habitat requirements for soil, fungi, light and moisture. Frankly, the Department of Natural Resources doesn't encourage orchid transplanting because the buyer has little way to discern if the orchid clump was legitimately obtained or illegally poached from a wild population. Most gardeners are better off trying to propagate native orchids and protect them in their native habitat.

A number of orchid species are available through nurseries. But Weber cautions buyers to beware of bargain prices, especially for the pink lady's-slipper. A cheap price may also mean the plant was poached from the wild. "We have to germinate these in the flask, and there's no way anyone can grow one for $1.99 and have it close to blooming size," he says.

A quest for beauty

Orchid growers invest years to get plants to blooming size, starting with the trials and tribulations of germination.

"In the wild, most orchids require very narrow environmental conditions to get started because their seeds are spore-like," says Meyer. "They're just these incredibly tiny, dust-like particles. So what orchid seeds have to do is form a relationship with a fungus when they hit the soil, and the soil must have the proper temperature, chemistry and moisture. That's not something you can easily encourage your backyard soil to do. I mean, either you have the stuff or you don't."

This symbiotic relationship between fungi and plant roots, known as mycorrhiza, provides the plants with most of their nutritional needs. Orchids like autumn coral root can depend entirely on mycorrhizae for nourishment; it doesn't even bother with leaves to make food or flowers.

Navigating the union between spore and fungus can be arduous. Growers maintain rigorously sterile conditions in their nurseries, and Smalley even dons a dust mask to keep the yeasts in human saliva at bay. "We live in a zoo of spores and stuff," he says.

Smalley starts seeds in Petri dishes with a tissue culture medium called Phytamax. Developed by Sigma Chemical Co., this gelatinous growth medium is behind the popularization of tropical orchids as houseplants. Cypripedium reginae, for instance, will spend three to four months in a Petri dish in the fridge held at 2-5ºC, then a year in darkness. During year two, the rooty mass is moved into a sterile mixture of perlite, vermiculite, rock wool and a little charcoal, where it will spend the next few years growing up in the greenhouse, or outside in a cage (to ward off rodents).

Keeping orchids alive during the early years is not for the novice. Decomposing organic matter can cause crown rot, while managing nutrition in a sterile environment can also be touchy. Orchids are particularly sensitive to saline conditions, which Smalley addresses by using rainwater or water purified by reverse osmosis, and by leaving peat out of the growing mix.

"Foolproof materials for potting are still a problem," he says. "How to start them [orchids] in terms of fertility is a problem. But I sort of approach this like they're all experiments."

Adventurous gardeners attempting to raise orchids will need patience, diligence, and an appreciation that these perennials set their own schedule.

A healthy dose of egotism may help, too. Weber jokes that neighborly rivalry among botany professors creates a niche for orchids among the shooting stars and prairie plants he sells at Madison's weekly farmers' market. A botanist will buy a plant one week, then a neighbor will inquire about it the next in a race to see who can keep these exotic natives alive and thriving at home. "They're the Holy Grail of the horticultural world," Weber says of orchids. Raising them is a worthy quest in this (or any) century.

I.E. Sadowski writes from Madison.