The days may still be dull, but amidst the dreary end-of-winter London weather, at Kew Gardens shines a beacon of lights and colours: the Orchid Festival.
Set within the Princess of Wales Conservatory until the 3rd of March 2024, this year’s annual extravaganza transports visitors to the landscapes of Madagascar.
Kew Work in Madagascar
Madagascar possesses an extraordinary biodiversity and a unique flora and fauna. This country is home to some of the world’s rarest plant species, with over 14,000 plants found nowhere else in the world. Among them are spectacular orchids, which come in a fantastic display of shapes, colours, and sizes.
Kew has been working in Madagascar since 1986, and has a permanent research base there, called the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre (KMCC). The KMCC works with local partners and communities to protect the native plants and habitats, and to improve livelihoods and food security.
Some of the projects include restoring degraded forests, documenting and conserving local plant species, promoting sustainable use of natural resources, and raising awareness and education about the importance of biodiversity.
A burst of Colors : Exploring the Orchid Festival
I am not going to spoil the whole experience by showing you everything I photographed during my visit, so you will just have a few dashes of colours dotting this blog, like that one :
The entry to the festival, taking place in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, is included with your admission to the gardens, but you’ll need to book a time slot in advance, as the event is very popular and the capacity of the glasshouse is limited. You can book your tickets online on Kew’s website.
Thus, the conservatory is never too crowded to make your experience confortable, so that you can enjoy the displays without feeling like ‘the thousandth seed in the vanilla bean pod’ (Yes of course I can make up new expressions, why not?)
Did you know vanilla is actually an orchid?
And I also would like to take the occasion of the orchid festival to tell you a story about a flower described by one of the most fascinating Londoners in the history of science:
Charles Darwin
Did you know?
Darwin spent most of his life in London, where he was born in 1809. There is a blue plaque in Gower street, Bloomsbury, where he used to live, and a statue of him at the Natural History Museum, where some of his specimens and manuscripts are also displayed.
Charles Darwin died in 1882, and is buried at Westminster Abbey.
Darwin’s Orchid
This is the Darwin’s orchid. It’s also called the Christmas orchid because… well you know, it flowers around Christmas…
In 1862, a British orchid grower sent Charles Darwin a series of orchids from Madagascar, including this one.
As you can see on the picture, it has a very long spur, the thing looking like a long thin green tail at the back (about 30 cm!), and that’s where the plant stores its nectar.
Darwin wrote to a friend at Kew :
“I have just received a Box from Mr Bateman with the astounding Angraecum sesquipedalia with a nectary a foot long. Good Heavens what insect can suck it”,
The long spur of this orchid was a fascinating mystery to Charles Darwin, but only a few days later he sent a second letter to his friend suggesting that:
“in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches”*.
* 11 inches is about 28cm
So basically Darwin was postulating the existence of an otherwise unknown species of insect, with a long tongue adapted to feed from this orchid. This hypothesis was based purely on the size of the flower and his understanding of the (co-)evolution of plants and animals.
Now we recognise this idea of co-evolution to be common and it is quite well known and documented (there are many examples of pollinator-flower adaptations), but it was a very new idea at the time.
More than an idea, it was a prediction from Darwin, as it wasn’t until decades after his death that the insect was actually found: a moth that was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta: ‘The Predicted’!
The moth is large, about 10/12 cm long and around 16cm in wingspan, but its proboscis (the tongue-ish) is truly colossal, forming a huge coil in front of its head when not in use.
A bit as if you were carrying your 4 meter water hose with you at all times!!
If you look carefully this orchid and its moth partner are represented on the poster of the festival:
They are among the guest stars, so if you want to see them and many more, come visit!
Helene
