If the winter weather is making you long for flowers, you may want to spend some time at a new Smithsonian Garden’s exhibit that features hundreds of orchids.
The Future of Orchids: Conservation and Collaboration show, in the Kogod Courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, celebrates the diversity of this popular family of plants, including one that you won’t find at Trader Joe’s, a Bulbophyllum nicknamed Bucky.
Bucky’s leaves are over 7 feet tall and smell like rotting meat, which Smithsonian Garden’s landscape architect Marisa Scalera and Smithsonian horticulturist Melanie Pyle said is meant to attract pollinators, such as beetles and flies.
“There are over 35,000 orchid species and they are present on every continent except Antarctica,” Scalera told WTOP. “I think that that enormous diversity is one of their great appeals.”
She said people are also attracted to orchids because they kind of look like us.
“A lot of flowers that we see have a radial symmetry — petals going all around. Orchids have a bilateral symmetry, which looks to us like a human face,” Scalera said.
This year’s exhibit features a collaboration with Baltimore-based artist Phaan Howng, who is known for creating lush, large-scale paintings and immersive experiences that explore the relationship between people and nature.
Among the pieces featured at the show are eight vibrant sculptures Howng created by adapting 3D scans from the Smithsonian’s vast orchid collection.
The 3D scans are also available online to inspire others to learn more about this amazing plant family.
“This is a tool for researchers now and in the future and is a way that people will be able to understand the details of the blooms of these orchids long after that particular bloom has wilted and faded,” Scalera said.
Not everyone learns the same way and science doesn’t resonate with everybody,” Pyle said. “Perhaps somebody will understand the importance of conservation by seeing it through art versus seeing it just with numerical information and scientific data.”
The orchid show, presented by the Smithsonian Gardens and the U.S. Botanic Garden, opens Saturday and runs through April 28.
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