Plant of the Week 01/07/2008: Blue orchid (Vanda coerulea)

Plant of the Week 01/07/2008

Vanda coerulea Griffith ex Lindley

Photographed by: Chelsie Vandaveer
Credits: Blue orchid photographed in Chelsie's personal collection.
Other Information: Olympus C-8080wz

The blue orchid (Vanda coerulea Griffith ex Lindley) is native to elevations from 2500 to 4000 feet in the Himalayas and the mountains of Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). Vandas have monopodial growth—a single stem with the leaves ranked along the sides—though they can and do branch infrequently. The inflorescence arises from a leaf axil near the top of the plant. The photographed specimen blooms twice a year—always in January and again in early summer.

When Edward’s Botanical Register published the description of the blue orchid in June 1847, European orchid enthusiasts were on alert. “Although we now possess several Vandas of much beauty, the finest is still unknown in Europe. This glorious plant, perhaps the noblest of the Indian race, was called Vanda coerulea by Mr. Griffiths [sic], who found it among the Khasya or Coosya Hills…”

William Griffith was surely amazed when he first saw the blue orchid while exploring Bhutan in 1837. He was a doctor by age 22 and served as a physician/botanist in the British colonial service in India. His travels would take him west into Afghanistan and southeast into the Malay Peninsula. He served about 2 years as the superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. He wrote a book of his travels and corresponded with the best botanists in London. Sir John King called him “a man of genius”. Of his blue orchid, though, he only sent dried specimens and a description back to England.

Thomas Lobb followed Griffith’s path seeking the blue orchid. Three years after Griffith’s description was published in the Botanical Register, the first living specimen bloomed at the James Veitch Nursery in Exeter. It was every bit what the Botanical Register said it was. It was fitting, then, the Botanical Register wrote, “In order to secure Mr. Griffith’s name…” for William Griffith died far from his Surrey home, a month shy of his 35th birthday and two years before most collectors had heard of his blue Vanda.

Demand for Griffith’s beautiful blue orchid has caused severe over-collecting to the point where today it is endangered, possibly on the verge of extinction in the wild. It is protected in its native habitat by the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES).

(Compiled from: Edward’s Botanical Register, Volume 33, John Lindley, ed., James Ridgway and Sons, Piccadilly, 1847, published to the Internet by Botanicus, Missouri Botanical Garden; Dictionary of British & Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists, Ray Desmond, The Natural History Museum, CRC Press, 1994; “Veitch Nurseries, The James Veitch Nursery Collectors”, Caradoc Doy: Horticulture in Devon and the South West of England)