Exploring Nature: Orchids

I have quite a few plants around my house and probably my favorite is an orchid in a pot in the living room front window. It has some lovely violet-purple blooms and was given to me as a gift about eleven years ago.

Although I’ve always considered orchids a tropical plant, they are amazingly adept at thriving almost everywhere except Antarctica. And that includes Texas.

Among the 50 varieties that grow wild in our state are grass pink, Chapman’s, snowy, water spider, cranefly, rose pogonia, whorled pogonia and — my favorite name — the spring ladies’ tresses. The moist woods of East Texas are especially suited to wild orchids.