Celebrating at Orchids Limited

After a brief hiatus to step away and finish up my senior semester of my bachelor’s degree (I’m officially graduated – hurray!), I am now back at it to celebrate the greatness of twin cities horticulture. Yay!

And on this blustery, miserable, -20 degree Fahrenheit winter day, what better way to do it than at an open house at Orchids Limited, located in Plymouth, Minnesota.

And it wasn’t a tour of just one greenhouse dedicated to growing orchids… it was three greenhouses, all 70 degrees and sunny.

*My favorite one – Paphiopedilum Hsinying Alien*

How I stumbled on this open house was a bit of random chance. Backtrack to last summer, I learned about the Orchid Society of Minnesota in the Horticulture building at the State Fair. Fast forward six months and one of their Facebook live posts found me on a Saturday morning with no plans or schoolwork to do.

“Hey, Jon, you want to go to Plymouth to see an orchid greenhouse?” Twenty minutes later we were in the car, driving along 494.

Just to clarify — Am I an orchid connoisseur? Pfft. I wish. I have dabbled in Phalaenopsis (the Moth orchid) the easy-to-grow variety found practically everywhere, including box stores and grocery stores. But this is a whole new level.

Ok, I can’t resist, here are some fun facts I found out about orchids: The genus name orchis is Ancient Greek, it means “testicle.” (yeah, Good luck unseeing that)

However the name “orchid” was introduced in 1845 as a shortened form of the family name Orchidaceae.

Orchids Limited offers open houses the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month as well as every Friday. They have classes (who wants to take kokedama with me?) and rumor has it, even Bingo. See the events here: https://www.orchidweb.com/orchid-classes