The Orchid Show Spotlight: Soroa Orchidarium
Posted in Exhibitions, The Orchid Show on March 2 2010, by Plant Talk
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Jessica Blohm is Interpretive Specialist for Public Education. |
Cuba is home to more than 300 species of orchids, some native only to Cuba. In The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower, one of the replicas on display is the Soroa Orchidarium, a botanical garden dedicated to education and the cultivation and conservation of the world’s orchids.
The groves of Cuban royal palms (Roystonea regia) on either side of the Orchidarium are meant to evoke the hills of Sierra del Rosario, a biosphere reserve of over 65,000 acres within which the Orchidarium is nestled. The Orchidarium features thousands of tropical plants and flowers from around the world, including 700 species of orchids from Asia, South America, and other tropical regions, many no longer found in the wild.
Founded in 1943 by botanist Tomás Felipe Camacho, the Orchidarium is maintained today by the University of Pínar del Río. In addition to the living collections, Camacho assembled a library of books specializing in orchids and other ornamental plants still considered to be the richest and most varied and up-to-date in the country.
The Orchid Show Cuban-born designer Jorge Sánchez, of the landscape architecture firm Sánchez & Maddux, calls the Sierra del Rosario “magical;” the mountains are very old and very green, with tremendous amounts of rainfall that make everything grow extremely well, he relates on The Orchid Show Audio Tour. To hear his story about the impact the region had on him as a child, call 718-362-9561 and press 553#.
