January 2, 2018 • 50 mins
Ever since Victorian orchid hunters ravaged the tropics in search of unique specimens to sell for ludicrous amounts of money, the West has been gripped by orchidelirium. Small wonder since orchids are not only beautiful, they’re among the most interesting plants on Earth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan, there's Jerry rolling back
again with us, and everything is back to normal. I
can stop trembling and foaming at the mouth like little
(00:23):
Danny in the Shining when he was all freaked out.
What are you talking about? You know what I'm talking about?
Remember when Danny's like just send there, zoned out, like
seeing I think the blood coming out of the elevator.
Why are you doing that right now? Because Jerry wasn't
around for a while. Remember we had guest producer no
(00:43):
who's great, but he's not Jerry. No. I mean, Jerry
is uh lovely person inside and out. And Noel looks
like somebody that might be falling around a parking lot
in a trench coat sometimes does, but it's beautiful inside
(01:04):
and under the trench coup. And I'm just kidding, nol
uh So orchids is what we're talking about today, Chuck. Yeah,
how you doing? I'm doing good. I'm feeling like nice
and mellow because I just I researched orchids all morning.
You huff some orkids. M I snorted the orchids. Uh,
this in in real time, just so that people know
(01:27):
is our last recording of the year. How's that for
a brain buster because it's coming out in the new year. Yeah,
because we like to take it easy in December. That's
annual stuff. You should know. Tradition is mellow December one month, chuck.
We we were one December. We closed down almost for
like the entire month. Do you remember? It was great?
(01:48):
And hey, I think we I think we recorded on
like December two or third, and then that was it
until like the beginning of January. Yeah. We love doing
this and we love our job, but like any job,
it is also very nice to not do it for
a few It's like it's like, um, those cocktail wheenies
you might encounter at a Christmas party or a a holiday
party this year. You know, you eat like a pound
(02:11):
and a half of them, You're doing fine. You have
two pounds of them, You're like, I need to take
a break for a couple of minutes. It's just like that.
I just made those for Mike party. I love those
chuff I made them with Uh. I did the Martha
Stewart recipe. No way, it's slightly fancier than you're running
the mill recipe. What does she do to those to
(02:32):
make them faints? Well, the uh use like a philo
like puff pastry dough instead of your stah. So that's
that's a little different than I'm talking about. But what else, well, nothing,
You know, you roll up the little smokey's, you brush
the inside with a little like honey mustard, roll up
the little smoky's, and then you brush the top with
egg because that's how you get a scrambled eggs. That's
(02:53):
how you get that good golden brown. And then I
dusted mine with a little rosemary, se salt and sesame seed. Wow.
And then you bake them up, cut him into thirds
and throw them in. I bought my first chafing dish
of my life. You have a chafing dish? No, you
got me beat. I have a cock pot that doubles
(03:13):
as a chafing dish. That's the best I can come
up for man's shaping dish. Yeah, I guess that I
was way more excited than a middle aged man should
be about his first shaping dish. I gotta say that, No,
it is pretty impressive. Is it scalloped like the edges
and all that? Is it ornator? Is it like modern
and clean? No, it's like the stainless steel oval. It's
(03:34):
not square or like it has It's not a two banger.
It's just you know, I threw my my sausage balls
and my uh pigs in a blanket, both in there
together because it's all pork. Actually, I think the little
smokies were beef. How they think about it? Oh God,
But it kept it hot all night long. You know
(03:56):
that's great. Well, that's what the chafing dish is supposed
to do, you know. But in years path Us I
would just put out the hot stuff and say, well,
eat it now or in thirty minutes. You can eat
it cold when you're good and drunk, and if you've
got any complaints, get out. That's how you're famous for
saying at your Christmas parties. So chuck what you've just
described as delicious. I'm talking about you know, if you
(04:18):
just took those smokey's and put them in like a
delicious sauce. Oh that that old trick. Yeah that I mean,
I'll I'll eat what you're making every day of the week. Yeah,
These things are like, that's like manna from heaven. That
tangy what is it? It's not just barbecue sauce. That's
sort of like, I don't know, some mystery gravy. It's
got a little something extra in it. Martha Stewart probably knows. Well.
(04:40):
I did sort of the dry version, because there's also
the sausage balls that you can have floating in that
stuff too. I'll eat those two. That's fine with me.
I think it's mostly the sauce. You can put anything
in there and I'll eat it. Uh. Yeah, I did
the dry pick in the blanket and then the dry
kind of the bis quick cheddar country else. Yea, man chuck,
(05:01):
you were killing it this year, which, by the way,
are good for breakfast with eggs for the next like
three days. I know. That's one of the great things
about throwing a holiday party, or really any party, but
a holiday party, because there's usually a great spread, is
the next day you get to just chow down. Yeah,
but it's weird because literally for dinner, I've been eating
(05:22):
like blue cheese and pre judo and sugar cookies and bourbon. Man. Well,
that's that's what they call the holidays. Anyway, So orchids, man, Hey,
do you have any orchids? No? But I am a big,
big orchid fan. Okay, I don't own them because I
(05:43):
don't want to kill them. That's how much I love
orchids is. I don't want them in my home because
I will kill them dead. You're gonna love this episode then,
because my friend I was once where you are, and
now I am an orchid raising fool. Oh really yeah,
I've got a six orchids and my I'm not kidding
four of them right now? Have um flowers flowers stem
(06:05):
shooting up? Yes? Did you raise them from pups? Uh? No? No,
they I mean they were like cuttings. But when I so,
here's the thing. When I bought them, they weren't bloom.
Like when everyone buys an orchid, Well, it's it's in bloom, right, yeah,
And that's actually a good, good rule of thumb, as
we'll find out. But everyone buys an orchid in bloom,
(06:26):
and then the orchid goes out of bloom, the flower
dies away, and you're like, well that's it for the orchid,
and you throw it into the trash. No, but I mean,
have you ever heard of anybody getting it to flower again.
I hadn't and now I'm one of those people who
has done that. Now I didn't know. I don't know
(06:47):
much about them. I just know that I go to
every orchids show or exhibit in a city if they
have one, and I'm there. Okay, So so listen to this.
It's really really simple. You go out and buy an orchid,
bring it home and wait, wait, wait, yeah, you want
to and bloom, and then once it stops blooming, it's
going to um. You're gonna be again. You're gonna be
(07:10):
tempted to just throw it away. You'll say, what use
are you to anyone? Now? But it's still alive plants.
So at this point you're gonna commit to repotting it,
and you can probably reuse the pot. It came in
a nice plastic pot that has lots of holes in it,
and you're gonna take You're gonna pull off that moss
that it came with. It probably came with sphagnum moss.
You're gonna pull it off because it's really tough to
(07:31):
work with if you're a novice. And then you're going
to put that they just the roots of the orchid
back into the pot with nothing in it, and then
you're gonna fill it in with wood chips orchid potting
mixed wood chips, and you're gonna put enough in there
to stabilize the orchid and it'll grow more and more
stable as it gets back used to its pot again.
(07:52):
But that's what you You You want to switch out the
moss for the wood chips. You want to water them
once a week, and you want to fertilize them about
once a week too. So on to say, Saturday, you
water them and then on Sunday you water them with
a little fertilizer. You do that once a week while
they're in their growth pattern or they're they're growing and
they're not dormant, and you will you will have happy orchids.
(08:17):
I promise you. It's it's way easier than you think.
Well I didn't think it was not easy. I just
an orchid. Once it loses its its leaves or it's flower,
it's just a sad um vine twisty tied to a chopstick. Right.
You want to give rid of the chopstick because it
(08:38):
is it's a depressing reminder of what was. It's true,
But you want to hang on too because you're gonna
get that thing to flower again if you take it,
like the orchid just challenged you to see if you
could get it to flower again. It makes it a
fun little game. Yeah, that's one way to look at it.
Your nemesis or like a friend in need, one of
(08:58):
the two. Yeah, but in kild is should not pick
a fight with me because I could choke the life
out of that skinny little thing. You could so fast.
So this this whole discussion about orchids, right, and the
fact that like you can go buy them anywhere you want,
from you know, one big box store to another big
box store, take your picture. You can find them at
(09:20):
every single nursery just about anywhere in the world. They
live in nature on six continents. But all the fact
that they're they're so ubiquitous and they're so cheap has
to do with um basically England's entrance into an orchid
craze in the Victorian era. Yeah, orchid Mania. In the
(09:40):
mid nineteenth century, England would send orchid hunters all over
the world to plunder these exotic flowers from Central and
South America. That sounds like nineteenth century England. Yeah, to
the point where, uh, a lot of these were named
after these plunder rs or orchid hunters, which is kind
(10:02):
of stinks, you know when you think about it, because
I'm sure they already had great names in South America.
They didn't just say, hey, future to be named flower
flower to be named later after English white man. Uh,
they had great names, I bet. But so they went
down there and they would brag about this one guy,
Frederick Sanders, Frederick Sander, he was the royal orchid grower
(10:23):
of Queen Victoria's England, and uh, he would, you know,
he would write home and brag, like, trust me, there's
no more orchids left, I got them all. Yeah. But
but he was actually probably not too far off because
there's a lot, a lot, a lot of different orchid frieties.
I think there's like something I saw twenty thousand, I
(10:44):
saw thousand. I've seen as high as thirty thousand species
of orchids around the world. There's two hundred thousand hybrid
versions since humans came into the picture. Um, but there's
not necessarily that many orchids for species. So these orchid
hunters were going and finding these things that were basically
(11:05):
considered one of a kind flowers as far as anyone
back in England was concerned, there was no other flower
that anybody they knew had ever seen that looked like this. Right,
So these were enormous status symbols and they fetched tens
of thousands of dollars sometimes in in mid nineteenth century
British money, not today's money. So they were basically like
(11:26):
you had to be royalty to own orchids at first
when they first started bringing them back to the UK. Yeah,
And how crappy is it that they wouldn't go down
there and be like, well, these are beautiful and amazing,
like here, we're gonna take some and learn how to
propagate these and you keep the rest. They're like, okay,
we're taking all these, thank you. Yeah, and let me
just set your village on fire for good measure on
(11:47):
my way out of town. So um, that's how the
orchid craz started out. And there's this pretty good article
by Michael Poland, the famous Omnivores Dilemma author. Um. He
wrote this back like two nine, called Love and Lies,
and it's just basically him just waxing flowery about how
great orchids are and how deceptive they are and all
(12:08):
the different ways they have of tricking other animals into
and appollinating them. Um. But one of the points he makes,
which is actually kind of legitimate, that not only have
like all these bees and wasps and other animals that
are tricked into pollinating orchids for various reasons. Yeah, not
only have they fallen under the orchids spelled. Probably the
(12:30):
most successful thing orchids ever did was to manage to
beguile humans, because we've taken them and propagated them all
over the world. And now they've come down from tens
of thousands of dollars and and you know, or tens
of thousands of pounds I should say, in mid nineteenth
century pounds um two what ten twenty bucks depending on
(12:52):
the size of the orchid, and you can get it
just about anywhere. And that's all because of humans can
get orchid out of a bubblegum machine these days. You
can be very specialized one, but you can. Uh. Well,
let's take a break here because I'm pretty excited, uh,
and I need to settle down, and then we'll come
back and talk about why we love these things so
(13:13):
much right after this, all right, So why humans love
(13:41):
or kids Part one? Um, besides the fact that they
look just amazing to the eye and they're so delicate
but also very hardy. Uh, they're symmetrical. They have bilateral symmetry,
and the science has proven that symmetry is attractive in humans. Um.
I know we've talked before about the fact that people
(14:02):
whose faces are more symmetrical or biologically more attractive than
than people like me which have You know, my face
is all over the place. One side, I know what
the other side is doing at any time. Yeah, and yeah,
with bilateral symmetry, it's it's like one half as mirror
image of the other half. And there's not that many
flowers in nature that that have bilateral symmetry, right, So
(14:24):
that's a pretty good initial theory. Yeah, And I mean,
I don't think people even realize that maybe what's going
on subconsciously when they look at an orchid and revel
in its beauty. That's one of the things you're just
you're not even maybe noticing, you know what I'm saying.
It's subluminal or subconscious close enough, close enough. So another
(14:44):
theory is that they look um quite vaginal in in nature.
A lot of them do, especially some of the most
common ones like Pholonopsis um have this. Well, at the
very least, you can say George O'Keefe definitely saw it right. Yeah,
And you know clearly throughout history, the Greeks and and
you're not the first one to say that, like, they
(15:06):
have often been thought of his aphrodisiacs. And part of
that reason is from the way they look, right. And
actually it's just so plainly obvious that during that orchid
craze in Victorian England, which is also called orchid delirium
or kid delirium, I think it's doesn't exactly roll off
the tongue, but they there were people who were roundly
(15:29):
opposed to that whole craze because of the overt sexuality
that orchid flowers broadcast. The most lurid flower. Yeah, because
you know, you catch like the town weirdo and like
your greenhouse. That's all you need to say, right, get
out of there now, they're no exactly he turned turned
(15:52):
the pump pose on them. Oh so so so there's
but there's there's um, there's another whole kind of over
sexuality to the whole thing too. And just the name
of orchids is I think Latin or Greek. Do you
remember which one? I don't remember. It's either Latin or
Greek for um, it's Greek for testical. Yeah, orchid the word,
(16:15):
and it refers to the shape of the bulb, the
orchid bulb. So people have been looking at orchids and
thinking very impure thoughts about flowers for a very long time.
Uh So this isn't just me, this isn't just Uncle
Josh getting weird on you. It's I'm following in a
long tradition of and actually I'm not even doing anything myself.
(16:36):
I'm just recounting. I'm reporting what other people have said before. Yeah,
you just have a large collection of orchids and Georgia
o'kee paintings and um and a French coat. So it's
a very normal habit for a middle aged man to
suddenly get into. It's actually really relaxing though. It's it's
it's it's cool just to care for him. It's well,
(16:58):
like I said, they're very delicate, but they're incredibly hearty,
which is kind of one of the cool things. And
they come in um like, you can't just describe an
orchid like this article says, that's like trying to describe
what's normal about any human being. There are so many
varieties and they all look so different, and they're all
manner of shapes and sizes and colors. Even though supposedly
(17:21):
not a true black or true blue, even though you
will see something that you will say, well that's blue
or black, it's really not right whatever true means, which
means that there's some orchid fans out there who are
trying to propagate true true black and true blue orchids
right now. Yeah, they're really like deep purple's usually variations
(17:41):
of purple, which is fine. They look great. I'm not
not knocking it. Thanks for coming out. So the the
um the fact that despite the fact that there are
so many different shape, sizes, colors, they do all sorts
of different stuff. They live in different places. Um. People
have attempted to kind of broadly classify or chids. One
(18:03):
of the first ways they do it is from their
growth habit and that you can divide orchids into two types.
From their monopodial which is if you're at like one
of those big box home stores. I'm not buzz marketing man,
I'm not gonna do it. You You're probably going to
find Foulonopsis because they're the easiest ones to care for,
(18:24):
they're the least fussy um. They're the ones that most
people are familiar with, but apparently they're the least common
out in the wild. But they have like an upright
growth pattern where they have a single stem with leaves
on either side of the stem growing opposite one another
UM and they shoot out a flower stem from the
top part of the bottom pair of leaves correct uh.
(18:48):
And then on the other side you have the more
common one, which is the simpodial uh. And these are beautiful.
These are the ones that grow horizontally uh, and they
send out their shoots through the old rhizome and the
leaves and flower escapes at that point form at the
top of the new shoots right. So one that grows
(19:08):
grows from like a horizontal rhizome to one that grows
upright vertically like you would think of a typical plant.
That's that's basically the two ways that an orchid's going
to grow as a plant. Another way that they classify
them too, is where they live. Because there are some
types of orchids that grow like what you would consider
a normal plant out of soil. Some grow out of
(19:30):
leaf litter. Those are called terrestrial orchids. Then there's the
kind that you typically think of grow on like trees
or on plants, or where a branch meets like a
tree round the actual trunk the bark of a tree.
Those are called epiphytes. And then lastly there's um lithophytes,
which grow on rocks but basically do the same thing
(19:50):
that the ones that grow on trees do, which is
they're harvesting nutrients from the decomposing litter that accumulates in
the grooves of the tree bark or where the elbow
of the branch hits the tree trunk. Um, all the
stuff that accumulates there. The roots of the orchid are
just sucking that stuff up. Yeah, but so it's not
like stealing nutrients from the thing that it grows on. Yeah,
(20:13):
they're not parasitic, And I thought it was great that
this article went went to the trouble of making that
for that point. But um, so they don't have a
parasitic relationship with trees. They do have a symbiotic relationship
with fungus, actually, so much so that they can't they
can't survive the first few stages of their life cycle
(20:34):
without a specific type of fungus basically acting as a
nurse maid for the seed and the young plant as
it's growing. Yeah, Like I mean, if you have a
lot of time and a lot of patients and a
lot of orchid wherewithal you can try to grow these
from seed, but it can take a decade to get
(20:58):
a flower from seed. And that's if you're really like,
that's if the thing lives. Like. Orchid seeds are so
tiny they're called dust seeds, and how they propagate is
there there need to be millions of these dispersed in
order to get orchids to grow at all. Right, And
so if it's like an epiphyte that grows it's a
(21:20):
variety that grows on tree bark, this seed has to
get carried away from the mother plant all the way
over to some other tree land in just the right
place on that tree bark, and then there has to
be the certain type of fungus that it has the
symbiotic relationship with that it can grow into the seed
(21:41):
and feed it nutrients while the seed is developing and germinating.
That has to happen. It doesn't happen very often, which
is why orchids are known for sending, like you said,
millions and millions of seeds just out there into the
ether and hoping that something sticks. It's like the orchids
way of throwing spaghetti at the wall. Yeah. Mean, it's
amazing that they did not go bye bye, and that
(22:04):
they've been around for eighty million years, I know. And
one of the one of the things is that Michael
Poland article is so great about this, like it's saying
like they have they're so maladapted in some ways that
they've had to get really creative in other ways, um
and and to ensure their survival. Like for example, an orchid, Uh,
(22:26):
they have pollen, right, they they're pollinating flowering plants, right,
But when you normally think of pollen, you think of
you know, the yellow stuff that powdery spores that just
you know, hit the wind and they just cover everything,
like everything is covered in yellow plant sperm basically is
what it is. Right. So, but it's true. So with
(22:47):
a with an orchid, they have something called pollinia, and
pollinia are their sacks of pollen. But they're not like
the powdery kind. They're like about the size of a
little grain of wheat, and in a in an orchid flower,
you have the reproductive column. It has the female reproductive
parts and the male reproductive parts all in the same place.
(23:08):
Right somewhere somewhere in there, there's that pollinia, and one
way or another, which we'll get into, that pollinia has
to get out of that orchid through no mechanism of
its own, and go way, way, way far away to
another orchid and pollinate with an orchid that is in
no way related to that orchid, so that you can
(23:29):
have um uh, it's just just more fitness basically for
the offspring, right, and then that that pollinia has to
go pollinate that reproductive column of that other one, and
then the seeds start to grow, and then you have
to broadcast the seeds and so to do this because
they don't have pollen that that is easily transmitted, they've
(23:51):
figured out how to trick bugs usually into pollinating for them.
We're spreading their pollen for Yeah. So like for example,
the um some of these are amazing Ophris epiphera. You
take that one, the prostitute orchid m or the b
orchid this one is uh, all these are amazing, like
(24:14):
how they've adapted to ensure their survival is just really
something else. So this one copies the scent and the
looks of female b um reproductive parts from from behind. Yeah,
like that's the cleanest way we can say it, in
order to attract the males. Like it looks and smells
(24:37):
like a lady be vagina. Yes, like there's a female
be in the flower already, and the male bees like, okay, hey,
how's it going, I'm gonna go see how you are
exactly tries to um, well, I guess assault is the
best way to put it. The female bee, who he
thinks he is already in the flower, but it turns
(24:57):
out actually is the flower. And while he's like getting
increasingly frustrated but trying to do his thing, the pollinia
um detaches from the flowers reproductive column onto the bee,
and the bee flies off finally, is like forget it,
I'm out of here. It goes and finds another flower
eventually and is duped and does the same thing, and
(25:19):
when he does that, pollinia is then transferred to that
flower's reproductive column and pollination takes place. It is amazing
because not not only does it look exactly like that be,
but it also puts out the same pheromones as that
the female of that be. That's that's pretty pretty. That's
natural selection at its finest. All right, here's one the
(25:41):
Dndrobium Sineese, not the Gary Sinese. Let's say, yeah, maybe
maybe Gary Cinese is uh like great great great uncle
was an orchid hunter maybe in China. Yeah, maybe, I
guess it's possible because this is a Chinese orchid and
this one is paul donated by hornets very specifically, and
(26:03):
hornets like bees. Bees do not like hornets. So this
flower imitates, uh, the pheromones of bee fear. And so
the hornets like, hey, I think there's a bee over
there that's scared of me. Let me go, uh, let
me go kill it, Let me go do whatever hornet's
due to Beas what do they do they kill him?
(26:25):
I think they sting him? Do they sting him? Or
to hornets bite? Now hornets sting? They sting? Uh? And
so it lures it over there because I think there's
a scared be and in fact there's nothing there but
the orchid going, welcome, hornet, leave your junk here, right,
and he does and already picks up the pollinium does
(26:47):
the same thing to another flower. So um, and then
one of the things that Paullen pointed out Michael Paullen
pointed out was saying, pollen, which one is it? Well,
I don't think so eminently you're thinking, so, yeah, but
which one is it? Do you know how to pronounce
his name correctly? Poland? We'll just say that just to
(27:09):
keep it from getting confusing. So what Michael Poland pointed
out was that, um, if you look at the types
of orchids like the orfice epiph era, if you look
at like the same orchids from the same variety, does
they'll they're slightly different. So it's clearly it looks like
the bee from behind and the pheromones that they're putting
(27:30):
out are the same as well, but they're slightly different.
And they're just different enough so that bees don't learn
to just avoid those flowers because they're being tricked every time.
So they it's it's just just different enough so that
the bees can't learn that. I think just think that's fascinating. Well, here,
did you read that Darwin article I sent you? Uh?
(27:52):
Did you send meyone? I didn't get it. Maybe I
didn't send this one. Sorry, yeah, you didn't send it.
It's okay, tell me about it. It's called moth Tongu's
orchids and Darwin they're predicted power of evolution and basically
back in the day eighteen sixty two, a British orchid
grower sent Darwin Um some orchids from Madagascar and said,
look at these things. Aren't they amazing? They have a
(28:13):
nectary which is like a foot long, and Darwin's like,
he writes back, he wrote to a friended q Q
Garden's kW which is wonderful, wonderful public garden in London,
which I went to with Emily and Um, and that
they had a quite an orchid collection there, of course
because they raided the world for years. Uh and he said,
(28:36):
he he wrote and said in Madagascar there must be
moths with the proboscis capable of extension to a length
between ten and eleven inches, because like that's the only
explanation here. Well yeah, and he was defending his new
theory of natural selection well and co evolution specifically, so
he positive these things are co evolving. And not only that,
(28:58):
he literally predicted had this new species that he that
no one had ever seen before. As it turns out,
there is a moth. In nineteen o seven, twenty years
after Darwin died, the subspecies of the gigantic congo moth
from Madagascar uh was identified that had this long proboscis
like twelve inches long. And they were like, hey, this
(29:21):
has got to be the thing. Like, I think Darwin
was right. But it wasn't until about a hundred years
later that they finally literally observed on camera this moth
feeding the flower. And Darwin was like, from his grave,
told you so. Yeah, he said, boo yah, how about that,
like a hundred and thirty years after he first suggested
(29:43):
this was all all proved out. That is pretty cool.
It's awesome that Darwin. He was a heck of a guy.
He's kind of smart, you know, he was a little smart.
I've got one more and this is just so Remember
we said there's twenty five thousand species. Yeah, we're not
gonna go through them. No, I want to go go
over one more though, called um Bulba phyl Um bakari
(30:07):
and it it's um pollination is aided by flies and
carrying beetles, and what attracts carrying beetles and flies, well,
rotting flesh because it's where flies feed and that's where
they lay their eggs that turn into maggots. Right, So
the flower puts out the smell of rotting meat to
(30:30):
attract the specific type of of pollinator so that it
can it can be pollinated. Let's I'm just insane. All right,
you want to take another break? Yeah, all right, we're
gonna take another break and come back and talk a
little bit about the fact that vanilla is an orchid
and other amazing facts. Alright, So vanilla is an orchid.
(31:14):
Moving on, that was an amazing fact. It is an
amazing fact. Like, who knew. I mean a lot of people,
but I didn't know. The flavoring is um, it's the
it's the seeds, Yeah, it's it's the vanilla bean. Obviously,
it's not like they grind up those sweet petals of
the flower. Yeah, but it's not even the outside of
(31:34):
the bean. It's the little tiny seeds inside. That's where
the vanilla flavor comes from. Yeah, there's this fascinating anecdote.
I can't remember the gist of it, but it's in
that that book, the Derito effect that I talked about before,
where they he was talking about the the origin of vanilla,
imitation vanilla and how they just changed the world. Basically,
(31:55):
apparently the vanilla market was crashing and somebody came in
at just the right time propped it up. Yeah, propped
it up with the imitation vanilla. But go again, go
check that book out. It's amazing. Well, are you talking
to me or everyone else? Uh? So let's talk about
some Let's talk about how to care for an orchid.
(32:15):
Just in case anybody said, you know what, I'm gonna
go to my local big box retailer. Even better, I'm
gonna go to my local, locally owned mom and pop
nursery and buy an orchid today, my local orchiddery. Yeah,
this is what you want to look for, Okay. Um, Well,
(32:37):
first of all, when you when you look at the
orchid itself, it might give you a few clues as
to what it needs care wise, um, right off the bat,
like and and these are broad um. I mean, if
you're an expert, obviously you know a lot about it.
But these are just some kind of broad things to
look for. If if it doesn't have many leaves, or
if the leaves are kind of leathery, um, then it
(32:59):
probably needs more light than maybe another variety. Yes, and
if the leaves are limp and soft, uh, it probably
maybe is a little light sensitive. And maybe you don't
throw it on your sun deck. Yeah. And and you
should probably ask the person you're buying the orchid from.
Oh yeah, do all that you know, don't us and
(33:20):
expect to walk away with complete knowledge. Yeah. So again
you're probably going to find if you look in the
potting medium. There are terrestrial orchids, but I've never seen
one in real life. I've only read about him on
the internet. You know, have you ever seen an orchid
in soil and dirt? Uh? Just I've just read about
it in legend right, same here, same here. I've always
(33:44):
seen him in like sphagnum moss or something like that.
You can also find it in like coconut husk, fiber
just all. Apparently styrofoam beads work just fine. Because the
point is the orchid isn't getting any of its nutrients,
or getting very very little of its new nutrients from
the growing medium. It's that which is why you need
(34:04):
to fertilize it, like basically weakly, because that's where it's
going to get it's um it's nutrients from So the
growing medium matters in that what you're what you're doing
is providing a lot of aeration for the roots of
the the um orchid, which don't they since they don't
grow underground, they're exposed to air and light and all
(34:26):
that stuff, which is totally fine, But that means you
don't want to cover them up too much with the
growing medium. You want to let them run free. Um
and and so that's the purpose of the growing medium itself. Yeah,
you don't want to grow an orchid in a rubber
bladder full of red clay. That's a that's dead. That's
a dead orchid. Uh. Those fleshy roots that you see there,
(34:46):
they have these white cells that they're covered with called velamen,
and they're just sponges that absorb all the nutrients and
all the water. Uh. And it's also a coding that
helps protect moisture loss from heat, even though they generally
like light and they like warm environments. You just it's
you know, they are sort of delicate. You don't wanna
you don't want to bake them in the hot Georgia
(35:08):
sun all day. Now. Very there are very few orchids,
and you're probably going to be like an orchid enthusiast.
By the time you really come across an orchid that
likes lots of intense sun, most of them, for the
most part, are they like sun, but it's gonna best
be indirect, like maybe in a window that gets a
little bit of sun. Um. And then the high humidity
(35:31):
I think is is not across the board, because there's
orchids that live like in mountainous areas where you know,
it's kind of rocky and desert and arid um. But
the most of the orchids you find, like you're gonna
find at the store in the United States or you know,
the UK, they're they're probably tropical. So they want high
(35:51):
humidity on the order of like and they want temperatures
daytime temperatures of at least eighty degrees fair high God
knows what that is in celsius. And then they want
like twelve to fourteen hours of daylight. Chance of brain yeah. Uh,
like I mentioned, they do, they need to be water
(36:13):
but like you said, they really like. The way to
kill an orchid is to overwater it or to not
have your drainage. Right. Um, a water logged orchid is
no good. No, apparently they can tolerate drought better than overwater,
much better. So um, again you want to water weekly.
You want to wait until the growing medium dries out
(36:33):
again and then water it. And since you're fertilizing it,
you you it's damaging to put fertilizer onto dry orchid
roots apparently, right, so, which is why you only want
to use liquid fertilizer with orchids, but you also want
to pre water it. You want the orchids to to
be already wet when you use the fertilizer. The next day,
(36:56):
dilute that liquid fertilizer two right, Yeah. The the rule
of thumb that I was told was you wanna um
fertilize weekly weekly, so w e a k yt Yeah, okay,
I don't even need to finish it. So um, I
use a orchid fertilizer which smells so bad. It smells
(37:17):
like it smells like concentrated like rodent p and it
kind of looks like a to actually like dried out
concentrated rodent p um. It could be, but apparently that's
what orchids like. Because it's keep in mind going, but
you it says to use like a teaspoon for a
gallon of water. So I use like three quarters of
(37:39):
a teaspoon for a gallon of water, and it seems
to work pretty well. And use that gallon for all
your orchids or you just keep that stored. Uh no, no,
I will. So I'll water them until like they're nice
the growing mediums nice and wet, and then I'll come
the next day and they'll just kind of like give it,
you know, a couple of the couple of turns a
couple of glugs on each orchid just to get it
(38:02):
around there. I don't soak them with it, so it
depends on, you know, how heavy handed I am from
week to week, and they don't seem to mind one
way or another. Sometimes I'll use the whole gallon, but
most of the time it's like half to two thirds
of the gallon I'll use to fertilize it. Do you
talk to them, I don't think so not. I'm not
(38:24):
conscious of it if I do, but that's I might.
Who knows, I'm pretty pretty insane. It's possible I talked
to him and don't realize that, you know what I mean,
Not like I'm I'm talking to them and they're talking back,
but it's entirely possible. I say things to them and
I'm not aware. Okay, but you you don't, like you
haven't named them and make an effort to speak to them.
(38:46):
O my crackpot. Come on, I don't know. I don't
mind that. You want to hear something weirder than that, though,
some ridiculously high percentage of dog owners don't talk to
their dogs. What do you mean, like something like I
want to say I will have to look it up.
But some more than half of dog owners don't talk
(39:10):
to their dogs, Like they don't give them orders or
they don't say your tweet bath. So they might give
them orders like sit or come on, let's go or
something like that, but they're they're not also like all right,
we're almost there, are um? Yeah, they're just not like
not not whatever is in between those two things. They're
not doing that. They're not talking to their dog. I
(39:30):
just find that bizarre. I mean, I'm yelling at my
dogs half the time. Are in the other half of them?
You know, I'm talking to a stupid boys. You don't
yell at your dogs. You yell at your dogs. Yeah,
I didn't know that. Yeah, of course, what do you say.
You yell like I love you so much? No, I
(39:52):
yelled Nico get off of me. Good God, stop it. Okay,
that's a pretty cute. Yeah, I mean it's not cute.
Like what do you do? Wh dog is in your face,
like chewing your hair and like scraping, scratching your chest
And are you threatened him with the baby gun? Yeah,
that's like the puppy bounder. No. I never hit my dogs,
(40:13):
but man, I yelled them all the time. They're all like,
Nico is just so needy. Is that your shelty? No, no, no, no,
Charlie's great. She never needs to get yelled at. Nico's
just needy, and like, uh, like jumps on people and
you know there's no way a dog can jump on someone.
And you're like, would you please get off of that person?
(40:35):
Oh sure, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you go get down. Yeah,
I got you. I see what you're saying that that
kind of stuff, not yelling like I hate you because
I'm upset in my own life, right right, Yeah, that's
what I was after, Like, I hate my job. It's
all your fault. Um, Hey, did I tell you that
(40:55):
we did a DNA test? On little Momo and she's
like ten percent shelty, Oh really yeah, And we were like,
well that explains her hurting us towards the door. Like
if if one of us is getting ready to go out,
she'll go and get the other one just kind of
like push push him toward the door. Is she also, um,
just very aware of where everyone is at all times,
(41:16):
like checks on everything. Yeah, Like if I go to
bed first, you mean, Momo will go to bed with me.
And then like if if if Momo decides that you
me stayed up long enough, she'll come out in the
doorway and kind of look at her like all right,
it's time to go to bed, She'll come and get you. Yeah.
And does she sit in the window and bark at
everything if if she had a window to bark out of, yes,
(41:39):
but we live in a windowless box, right, So that's
Charlie's main job. Is she just sits on the sun
room sofa looking out the window as if it is
her post. Yeah, and she'll bark at yeah this this
Charlie Barkett birds no, just like people and other dogs.
I mean, and literally like it's her job. You can
(42:00):
tell she's not a jerk. She's just like, I'm on
duty is what we call it, you know, understood, Yeah,
it's tell her to clock out, clock out, Charlie. Does
she listen, come to bed? Have you tried yelling at
at her? No, she's she doesn't need yelling, like A said,
said clock out Charlie. Um, all right, So back to orchids.
(42:21):
Potting and repotting orchids generally, unless you have to repot
an orchid, don't repot an orchid just because you're like, yeah,
I'm kind of sick of that pot. Let me put
it in a new one, right, because they say, oh, yeah,
I'm not very happy with that. I'm not going to
I'm not going to send up another flower for at
least a year. Yeah, they don't like getting repotted. Um,
(42:41):
but if you have to report, uh, I mean, what's
your advice. I'm actually I've not had that much trouble reporting. Um. Yeah,
like I guess, I guess they don't immediately that Actually,
to tell you the truth, now that you asked me,
that that explains why some of them haven't flowered for
(43:02):
so long, because I have repotted them here there, but
I was over watering them and it was kind of
vital that I did repot them because their roots were decaying.
So if you have an orchid that you realize you've overwatered.
And this is when I learned not to use sphagnum
moss any longer because it really holds in water. And
that's the great thing about the pine bark is that
(43:24):
it just lets the water go right through it hangs
onto some of it. But you're the point is to
just water and orchid as frequently as it needs it,
rather than watering it and letting the soil hold the
water and for it right. So the sphagnum moss was
holding that that water in and the roots were rotting,
so I had to repot it. I had to trim
off some of the old roots, and then I learned
this trick somewhere on the internet. But I dusted the
(43:47):
roots that were rotted with cinnamon, and I think cinnamon
might be an anti microbial or something like that. But brother,
my orchid loved me for that, Thank you so much.
Started growing almost immediately, even though I just repotted it
and cut off a significant number of its roots. Yeah,
so it's vital to repotted sometimes. But yeah, like you said,
(44:10):
you don't want to just be like, I think I'll
switch it to this pot for this month because I
like yellow in the spring. Yeah exactly, Yeah, Um, what
else you got anything else? No? I think you said
that growing it from seed is next to impossible, so
it's just go buy one. Yeah, i'd like to hear
from h I'm sure there's some horticulturists who have done that.
(44:32):
I'd like to hear about that experience. Yeah, I'd like
to hear all the things I got wrong. You're like,
chuck me out at your dog, right, and we would also.
I think we kind of touched on it at the
very beginning. But I've got to give a shout out
to the article The Orchid Thief and the movie that
was based on adaptation. Yeah, I don't think we can
(44:52):
uh like in our in our stupid article. It's a
orchids in pop culture, the movie While or Kid with
Mickey Rourke and gry Oates like, are you kidding me? Like?
There was an entire movie written about orchid hunting and
the super rare ghost orchid that John Laroche hunts in
(45:15):
the wild swamps of Florida by the great writer Susan Orlean,
and it was not even mentioned. No, you know, I
got a story about that. My friend Stacy works. It's
a costumer in the film industry, and she worked on adaptation.
And about a year before she started work, I was
just into reading any and all scripts I could read
(45:37):
at the time. And she said, I got a new script.
It's called The Orchid Thief by some uh dude named
Charlie Kaufman. It's like, all right, And I read it
in a night. I couldn't put it down, and I
called her up the next day. I was like, I've
never read anything like this in my life. There hadn't
been anything like that, Like this is unlike any movie
I've ever heard of. And I have no idea what
(45:58):
I just read. I know. And then they changed the
name from worka deep to adaptation and it's one of
my favorites. It's great. Charlie Kaufman needs to get back
to work now he's working. What's he doing now? Did
you see? Uh? And I'm a Lisa, Yeah, that was
like three years ago. That's what I'm saying, get to work, Kaufman.
I'm sure he's working on something. I hope so, uh yeah,
(46:19):
I love the adaptation. Chris Cooper that performs is one
of my favorite acting roles of all time. Yeah, they
couldn't have couldn't have cast it better than that. God,
he was great. Yeah, well that's uh, that's adaptation, as
was Nick Cage. I don't want to short change him. No,
and of course Meryl Streep, I mean, does it even
need to be said? Yeah, but Nick Cage can he
gets a lot of crap. But well he oh sure
(46:46):
yeah yeah, the wicker Man remake. That was not the
least of him. If you go on to Netflix, he's
on like every third third movie on Netflix. Yeah, he's
making bank. Brother, I don't know if you can maybe
he's definitely keeping his head above water. Well he's spindy,
so how is that what it is? Yeah? Apparently he
(47:07):
is quite a reputation for buying ridiculous things. M hm,
that cost a lot of dough. Well you got anything else?
And now I've got nothing else? All right? Well, uh,
welcome Slash. I'm sorry to all of the new people
who have never heard this podcast before but are into
orchids and thought they'd give it a try. Uh And
(47:27):
if you want to know more about orchids, you can
type that word in the search part how stuff works
dot Com. Since I said that it's time for a
listener mail speaking of all the things you just said
and listener mail. Did you see that one from the guy?
He said that we were just dilettants and kind of
laid into us. Yeah, you go just dilettants and all
(47:48):
you do is just talked like forty minutes about an
overview about things right and email them back. It's like,
you got it, buddy, Yeah, that's exactly what we are.
His complaint was that each episode is about a different topic. Yeah.
I was like, and then we just give the broadest
of overviews over forty five minutes. I was like, that
is our show to a t. Yeah, you should write
(48:08):
our buyook. Keep looking, buddy, I wish him. Well, that
was nice of you. That's that's world class, Chuck. All right,
I'm gonna call this flight attendant response. Surprisingly, the bet
show kind of blew up. We got a lot of
responses from airline workers and flight attendants and passengers, and
most of them were angry either. I think we did
(48:29):
good on that one. So here we go, flight attendant here,
thank you for the awesome podcast. It was really on point.
I was impressed the amount of research and how much
you got it right. You both asked for someone to
weigh on whether we're paid for delays the cabin door closed.
The answer is yes. We can even be paid a
percentage for delays with the cabin door open, but it
has to be over a certain amount of time with
customers on board, and we have to file the request ourselves.
(48:53):
Most people don't because it's not much money and not
worth it. Secondly, there was and this is with uh
this per Sin's airline right, So I don't know if
that's true across the board. Is it a major airline? Well,
just let me finish. Secondly, there was some debate over
whether we needed to score an eighty or ninety and training. Actually,
you're both right. We have to score at least an
(49:13):
eighty on the first take. If we fail, we have
to score ninety on the retake. Thank you for doing
an episode on our profession. The things could be better.
We love our jobs and have a great time. But
see you all on a flight sometime soon. And Chuck,
the whiskey will be on me. Sorry, Josh, no peanuts.
That is from Daniel, flight attendant, major airline. Everything's always
(49:35):
coming up, Chuck, I bet you can get your whiskey too,
my friend, that'd be great. Well, thanks a lot, Daniel.
I'll be sure to go check the email out and
figure out what an email or what airline you work for,
and then start flying it and hope we crossed paths.
I can get some free whiskey too. If you want
to offer us free whiskey, we are all ears. You
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter,
(49:58):
and there's also an official s Y s K podcast page.
I also have a website, by the way, Are you
serious Clark dot com. You can find Chuck on Facebook
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at the official stuff
you Should Know Facebook page. You can send all of us,
including Jerry, an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(50:24):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
that how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan, there's Jerry rolling back
again with us, and everything is back to normal. I
can stop trembling and foaming at the mouth like little
(00:23):
Danny in the Shining when he was all freaked out.
What are you talking about? You know what I'm talking about?
Remember when Danny's like just send there, zoned out, like
seeing I think the blood coming out of the elevator.
Why are you doing that right now? Because Jerry wasn't
around for a while. Remember we had guest producer no
(00:43):
who's great, but he's not Jerry. No. I mean, Jerry
is uh lovely person inside and out. And Noel looks
like somebody that might be falling around a parking lot
in a trench coat sometimes does, but it's beautiful inside
(01:04):
and under the trench coup. And I'm just kidding, nol
uh So orchids is what we're talking about today, Chuck. Yeah,
how you doing? I'm doing good. I'm feeling like nice
and mellow because I just I researched orchids all morning.
You huff some orkids. M I snorted the orchids. Uh,
this in in real time, just so that people know
(01:27):
is our last recording of the year. How's that for
a brain buster because it's coming out in the new year. Yeah,
because we like to take it easy in December. That's
annual stuff. You should know. Tradition is mellow December one month, chuck.
We we were one December. We closed down almost for
like the entire month. Do you remember? It was great?
(01:48):
And hey, I think we I think we recorded on
like December two or third, and then that was it
until like the beginning of January. Yeah. We love doing
this and we love our job, but like any job,
it is also very nice to not do it for
a few It's like it's like, um, those cocktail wheenies
you might encounter at a Christmas party or a a holiday
party this year. You know, you eat like a pound
(02:11):
and a half of them, You're doing fine. You have
two pounds of them, You're like, I need to take
a break for a couple of minutes. It's just like that.
I just made those for Mike party. I love those
chuff I made them with Uh. I did the Martha
Stewart recipe. No way, it's slightly fancier than you're running
the mill recipe. What does she do to those to
(02:32):
make them faints? Well, the uh use like a philo
like puff pastry dough instead of your stah. So that's
that's a little different than I'm talking about. But what else, well, nothing,
You know, you roll up the little smokey's, you brush
the inside with a little like honey mustard, roll up
the little smoky's, and then you brush the top with
egg because that's how you get a scrambled eggs. That's
(02:53):
how you get that good golden brown. And then I
dusted mine with a little rosemary, se salt and sesame seed. Wow.
And then you bake them up, cut him into thirds
and throw them in. I bought my first chafing dish
of my life. You have a chafing dish? No, you
got me beat. I have a cock pot that doubles
(03:13):
as a chafing dish. That's the best I can come
up for man's shaping dish. Yeah, I guess that I
was way more excited than a middle aged man should
be about his first shaping dish. I gotta say that, No,
it is pretty impressive. Is it scalloped like the edges
and all that? Is it ornator? Is it like modern
and clean? No, it's like the stainless steel oval. It's
(03:34):
not square or like it has It's not a two banger.
It's just you know, I threw my my sausage balls
and my uh pigs in a blanket, both in there
together because it's all pork. Actually, I think the little
smokies were beef. How they think about it? Oh God,
But it kept it hot all night long. You know
(03:56):
that's great. Well, that's what the chafing dish is supposed
to do, you know. But in years path Us I
would just put out the hot stuff and say, well,
eat it now or in thirty minutes. You can eat
it cold when you're good and drunk, and if you've
got any complaints, get out. That's how you're famous for
saying at your Christmas parties. So chuck what you've just
described as delicious. I'm talking about you know, if you
(04:18):
just took those smokey's and put them in like a
delicious sauce. Oh that that old trick. Yeah that I mean,
I'll I'll eat what you're making every day of the week. Yeah,
These things are like, that's like manna from heaven. That
tangy what is it? It's not just barbecue sauce. That's
sort of like, I don't know, some mystery gravy. It's
got a little something extra in it. Martha Stewart probably knows. Well.
(04:40):
I did sort of the dry version, because there's also
the sausage balls that you can have floating in that
stuff too. I'll eat those two. That's fine with me.
I think it's mostly the sauce. You can put anything
in there and I'll eat it. Uh. Yeah, I did
the dry pick in the blanket and then the dry
kind of the bis quick cheddar country else. Yea, man chuck,
(05:01):
you were killing it this year, which, by the way,
are good for breakfast with eggs for the next like
three days. I know. That's one of the great things
about throwing a holiday party, or really any party, but
a holiday party, because there's usually a great spread, is
the next day you get to just chow down. Yeah,
but it's weird because literally for dinner, I've been eating
(05:22):
like blue cheese and pre judo and sugar cookies and bourbon. Man. Well,
that's that's what they call the holidays. Anyway, So orchids, man, Hey,
do you have any orchids? No? But I am a big,
big orchid fan. Okay, I don't own them because I
(05:43):
don't want to kill them. That's how much I love
orchids is. I don't want them in my home because
I will kill them dead. You're gonna love this episode then,
because my friend I was once where you are, and
now I am an orchid raising fool. Oh really yeah,
I've got a six orchids and my I'm not kidding
four of them right now? Have um flowers flowers stem
(06:05):
shooting up? Yes? Did you raise them from pups? Uh? No? No,
they I mean they were like cuttings. But when I so,
here's the thing. When I bought them, they weren't bloom.
Like when everyone buys an orchid, Well, it's it's in bloom, right, yeah,
And that's actually a good, good rule of thumb, as
we'll find out. But everyone buys an orchid in bloom,
(06:26):
and then the orchid goes out of bloom, the flower
dies away, and you're like, well that's it for the orchid,
and you throw it into the trash. No, but I mean,
have you ever heard of anybody getting it to flower again.
I hadn't and now I'm one of those people who
has done that. Now I didn't know. I don't know
(06:47):
much about them. I just know that I go to
every orchids show or exhibit in a city if they
have one, and I'm there. Okay, So so listen to this.
It's really really simple. You go out and buy an orchid,
bring it home and wait, wait, wait, yeah, you want
to and bloom, and then once it stops blooming, it's
going to um. You're gonna be again. You're gonna be
(07:10):
tempted to just throw it away. You'll say, what use
are you to anyone? Now? But it's still alive plants.
So at this point you're gonna commit to repotting it,
and you can probably reuse the pot. It came in
a nice plastic pot that has lots of holes in it,
and you're gonna take You're gonna pull off that moss
that it came with. It probably came with sphagnum moss.
You're gonna pull it off because it's really tough to
(07:31):
work with if you're a novice. And then you're going
to put that they just the roots of the orchid
back into the pot with nothing in it, and then
you're gonna fill it in with wood chips orchid potting
mixed wood chips, and you're gonna put enough in there
to stabilize the orchid and it'll grow more and more
stable as it gets back used to its pot again.
(07:52):
But that's what you You You want to switch out the
moss for the wood chips. You want to water them
once a week, and you want to fertilize them about
once a week too. So on to say, Saturday, you
water them and then on Sunday you water them with
a little fertilizer. You do that once a week while
they're in their growth pattern or they're they're growing and
they're not dormant, and you will you will have happy orchids.
(08:17):
I promise you. It's it's way easier than you think.
Well I didn't think it was not easy. I just
an orchid. Once it loses its its leaves or it's flower,
it's just a sad um vine twisty tied to a chopstick. Right.
You want to give rid of the chopstick because it
(08:38):
is it's a depressing reminder of what was. It's true,
But you want to hang on too because you're gonna
get that thing to flower again if you take it,
like the orchid just challenged you to see if you
could get it to flower again. It makes it a
fun little game. Yeah, that's one way to look at it.
Your nemesis or like a friend in need, one of
(08:58):
the two. Yeah, but in kild is should not pick
a fight with me because I could choke the life
out of that skinny little thing. You could so fast.
So this this whole discussion about orchids, right, and the
fact that like you can go buy them anywhere you want,
from you know, one big box store to another big
box store, take your picture. You can find them at
(09:20):
every single nursery just about anywhere in the world. They
live in nature on six continents. But all the fact
that they're they're so ubiquitous and they're so cheap has
to do with um basically England's entrance into an orchid
craze in the Victorian era. Yeah, orchid Mania. In the
(09:40):
mid nineteenth century, England would send orchid hunters all over
the world to plunder these exotic flowers from Central and
South America. That sounds like nineteenth century England. Yeah, to
the point where, uh, a lot of these were named
after these plunder rs or orchid hunters, which is kind
(10:02):
of stinks, you know when you think about it, because
I'm sure they already had great names in South America.
They didn't just say, hey, future to be named flower
flower to be named later after English white man. Uh,
they had great names, I bet. But so they went
down there and they would brag about this one guy,
Frederick Sanders, Frederick Sander, he was the royal orchid grower
(10:23):
of Queen Victoria's England, and uh, he would, you know,
he would write home and brag, like, trust me, there's
no more orchids left, I got them all. Yeah. But
but he was actually probably not too far off because
there's a lot, a lot, a lot of different orchid frieties.
I think there's like something I saw twenty thousand, I
(10:44):
saw thousand. I've seen as high as thirty thousand species
of orchids around the world. There's two hundred thousand hybrid
versions since humans came into the picture. Um, but there's
not necessarily that many orchids for species. So these orchid
hunters were going and finding these things that were basically
(11:05):
considered one of a kind flowers as far as anyone
back in England was concerned, there was no other flower
that anybody they knew had ever seen that looked like this. Right,
So these were enormous status symbols and they fetched tens
of thousands of dollars sometimes in in mid nineteenth century
British money, not today's money. So they were basically like
(11:26):
you had to be royalty to own orchids at first
when they first started bringing them back to the UK. Yeah,
And how crappy is it that they wouldn't go down
there and be like, well, these are beautiful and amazing,
like here, we're gonna take some and learn how to
propagate these and you keep the rest. They're like, okay,
we're taking all these, thank you. Yeah, and let me
just set your village on fire for good measure on
(11:47):
my way out of town. So um, that's how the
orchid craz started out. And there's this pretty good article
by Michael Poland, the famous Omnivores Dilemma author. Um. He
wrote this back like two nine, called Love and Lies,
and it's just basically him just waxing flowery about how
great orchids are and how deceptive they are and all
(12:08):
the different ways they have of tricking other animals into
and appollinating them. Um. But one of the points he makes,
which is actually kind of legitimate, that not only have
like all these bees and wasps and other animals that
are tricked into pollinating orchids for various reasons. Yeah, not
only have they fallen under the orchids spelled. Probably the
(12:30):
most successful thing orchids ever did was to manage to
beguile humans, because we've taken them and propagated them all
over the world. And now they've come down from tens
of thousands of dollars and and you know, or tens
of thousands of pounds I should say, in mid nineteenth
century pounds um two what ten twenty bucks depending on
(12:52):
the size of the orchid, and you can get it
just about anywhere. And that's all because of humans can
get orchid out of a bubblegum machine these days. You
can be very specialized one, but you can. Uh. Well,
let's take a break here because I'm pretty excited, uh,
and I need to settle down, and then we'll come
back and talk about why we love these things so
(13:13):
much right after this, all right, So why humans love
(13:41):
or kids Part one? Um, besides the fact that they
look just amazing to the eye and they're so delicate
but also very hardy. Uh, they're symmetrical. They have bilateral symmetry,
and the science has proven that symmetry is attractive in humans. Um.
I know we've talked before about the fact that people
(14:02):
whose faces are more symmetrical or biologically more attractive than
than people like me which have You know, my face
is all over the place. One side, I know what
the other side is doing at any time. Yeah, and yeah,
with bilateral symmetry, it's it's like one half as mirror
image of the other half. And there's not that many
flowers in nature that that have bilateral symmetry, right, So
(14:24):
that's a pretty good initial theory. Yeah, And I mean,
I don't think people even realize that maybe what's going
on subconsciously when they look at an orchid and revel
in its beauty. That's one of the things you're just
you're not even maybe noticing, you know what I'm saying.
It's subluminal or subconscious close enough, close enough. So another
(14:44):
theory is that they look um quite vaginal in in nature.
A lot of them do, especially some of the most
common ones like Pholonopsis um have this. Well, at the
very least, you can say George O'Keefe definitely saw it right. Yeah,
And you know clearly throughout history, the Greeks and and
you're not the first one to say that, like, they
(15:06):
have often been thought of his aphrodisiacs. And part of
that reason is from the way they look, right. And
actually it's just so plainly obvious that during that orchid
craze in Victorian England, which is also called orchid delirium
or kid delirium, I think it's doesn't exactly roll off
the tongue, but they there were people who were roundly
(15:29):
opposed to that whole craze because of the overt sexuality
that orchid flowers broadcast. The most lurid flower. Yeah, because
you know, you catch like the town weirdo and like
your greenhouse. That's all you need to say, right, get
out of there now, they're no exactly he turned turned
(15:52):
the pump pose on them. Oh so so so there's
but there's there's um, there's another whole kind of over
sexuality to the whole thing too. And just the name
of orchids is I think Latin or Greek. Do you
remember which one? I don't remember. It's either Latin or
Greek for um, it's Greek for testical. Yeah, orchid the word,
(16:15):
and it refers to the shape of the bulb, the
orchid bulb. So people have been looking at orchids and
thinking very impure thoughts about flowers for a very long time.
Uh So this isn't just me, this isn't just Uncle
Josh getting weird on you. It's I'm following in a
long tradition of and actually I'm not even doing anything myself.
(16:36):
I'm just recounting. I'm reporting what other people have said before. Yeah,
you just have a large collection of orchids and Georgia
o'kee paintings and um and a French coat. So it's
a very normal habit for a middle aged man to
suddenly get into. It's actually really relaxing though. It's it's
it's it's cool just to care for him. It's well,
(16:58):
like I said, they're very delicate, but they're incredibly hearty,
which is kind of one of the cool things. And
they come in um like, you can't just describe an
orchid like this article says, that's like trying to describe
what's normal about any human being. There are so many
varieties and they all look so different, and they're all
manner of shapes and sizes and colors. Even though supposedly
(17:21):
not a true black or true blue, even though you
will see something that you will say, well that's blue
or black, it's really not right whatever true means, which
means that there's some orchid fans out there who are
trying to propagate true true black and true blue orchids
right now. Yeah, they're really like deep purple's usually variations
(17:41):
of purple, which is fine. They look great. I'm not
not knocking it. Thanks for coming out. So the the
um the fact that despite the fact that there are
so many different shape, sizes, colors, they do all sorts
of different stuff. They live in different places. Um. People
have attempted to kind of broadly classify or chids. One
(18:03):
of the first ways they do it is from their
growth habit and that you can divide orchids into two types.
From their monopodial which is if you're at like one
of those big box home stores. I'm not buzz marketing man,
I'm not gonna do it. You You're probably going to
find Foulonopsis because they're the easiest ones to care for,
(18:24):
they're the least fussy um. They're the ones that most
people are familiar with, but apparently they're the least common
out in the wild. But they have like an upright
growth pattern where they have a single stem with leaves
on either side of the stem growing opposite one another
UM and they shoot out a flower stem from the
top part of the bottom pair of leaves correct uh.
(18:48):
And then on the other side you have the more
common one, which is the simpodial uh. And these are beautiful.
These are the ones that grow horizontally uh, and they
send out their shoots through the old rhizome and the
leaves and flower escapes at that point form at the
top of the new shoots right. So one that grows
(19:08):
grows from like a horizontal rhizome to one that grows
upright vertically like you would think of a typical plant.
That's that's basically the two ways that an orchid's going
to grow as a plant. Another way that they classify
them too, is where they live. Because there are some
types of orchids that grow like what you would consider
a normal plant out of soil. Some grow out of
(19:30):
leaf litter. Those are called terrestrial orchids. Then there's the
kind that you typically think of grow on like trees
or on plants, or where a branch meets like a
tree round the actual trunk the bark of a tree.
Those are called epiphytes. And then lastly there's um lithophytes,
which grow on rocks but basically do the same thing
(19:50):
that the ones that grow on trees do, which is
they're harvesting nutrients from the decomposing litter that accumulates in
the grooves of the tree bark or where the elbow
of the branch hits the tree trunk. Um, all the
stuff that accumulates there. The roots of the orchid are
just sucking that stuff up. Yeah, but so it's not
like stealing nutrients from the thing that it grows on. Yeah,
(20:13):
they're not parasitic, And I thought it was great that
this article went went to the trouble of making that
for that point. But um, so they don't have a
parasitic relationship with trees. They do have a symbiotic relationship
with fungus, actually, so much so that they can't they
can't survive the first few stages of their life cycle
(20:34):
without a specific type of fungus basically acting as a
nurse maid for the seed and the young plant as
it's growing. Yeah, Like I mean, if you have a
lot of time and a lot of patients and a
lot of orchid wherewithal you can try to grow these
from seed, but it can take a decade to get
(20:58):
a flower from seed. And that's if you're really like,
that's if the thing lives. Like. Orchid seeds are so
tiny they're called dust seeds, and how they propagate is
there there need to be millions of these dispersed in
order to get orchids to grow at all. Right, And
so if it's like an epiphyte that grows it's a
(21:20):
variety that grows on tree bark, this seed has to
get carried away from the mother plant all the way
over to some other tree land in just the right
place on that tree bark, and then there has to
be the certain type of fungus that it has the
symbiotic relationship with that it can grow into the seed
(21:41):
and feed it nutrients while the seed is developing and germinating.
That has to happen. It doesn't happen very often, which
is why orchids are known for sending, like you said,
millions and millions of seeds just out there into the
ether and hoping that something sticks. It's like the orchids
way of throwing spaghetti at the wall. Yeah. Mean, it's
amazing that they did not go bye bye, and that
(22:04):
they've been around for eighty million years, I know. And
one of the one of the things is that Michael
Poland article is so great about this, like it's saying
like they have they're so maladapted in some ways that
they've had to get really creative in other ways, um
and and to ensure their survival. Like for example, an orchid, Uh,
(22:26):
they have pollen, right, they they're pollinating flowering plants, right,
But when you normally think of pollen, you think of
you know, the yellow stuff that powdery spores that just
you know, hit the wind and they just cover everything,
like everything is covered in yellow plant sperm basically is
what it is. Right. So, but it's true. So with
(22:47):
a with an orchid, they have something called pollinia, and
pollinia are their sacks of pollen. But they're not like
the powdery kind. They're like about the size of a
little grain of wheat, and in a in an orchid flower,
you have the reproductive column. It has the female reproductive
parts and the male reproductive parts all in the same place.
(23:08):
Right somewhere somewhere in there, there's that pollinia, and one
way or another, which we'll get into, that pollinia has
to get out of that orchid through no mechanism of
its own, and go way, way, way far away to
another orchid and pollinate with an orchid that is in
no way related to that orchid, so that you can
(23:29):
have um uh, it's just just more fitness basically for
the offspring, right, and then that that pollinia has to
go pollinate that reproductive column of that other one, and
then the seeds start to grow, and then you have
to broadcast the seeds and so to do this because
they don't have pollen that that is easily transmitted, they've
(23:51):
figured out how to trick bugs usually into pollinating for them.
We're spreading their pollen for Yeah. So like for example,
the um some of these are amazing Ophris epiphera. You
take that one, the prostitute orchid m or the b
orchid this one is uh, all these are amazing, like
(24:14):
how they've adapted to ensure their survival is just really
something else. So this one copies the scent and the
looks of female b um reproductive parts from from behind. Yeah,
like that's the cleanest way we can say it, in
order to attract the males. Like it looks and smells
(24:37):
like a lady be vagina. Yes, like there's a female
be in the flower already, and the male bees like, okay, hey,
how's it going, I'm gonna go see how you are
exactly tries to um, well, I guess assault is the
best way to put it. The female bee, who he
thinks he is already in the flower, but it turns
(24:57):
out actually is the flower. And while he's like getting
increasingly frustrated but trying to do his thing, the pollinia
um detaches from the flowers reproductive column onto the bee,
and the bee flies off finally, is like forget it,
I'm out of here. It goes and finds another flower
eventually and is duped and does the same thing, and
(25:19):
when he does that, pollinia is then transferred to that
flower's reproductive column and pollination takes place. It is amazing
because not not only does it look exactly like that be,
but it also puts out the same pheromones as that
the female of that be. That's that's pretty pretty. That's
natural selection at its finest. All right, here's one the
(25:41):
Dndrobium Sineese, not the Gary Sinese. Let's say, yeah, maybe
maybe Gary Cinese is uh like great great great uncle
was an orchid hunter maybe in China. Yeah, maybe, I
guess it's possible because this is a Chinese orchid and
this one is paul donated by hornets very specifically, and
(26:03):
hornets like bees. Bees do not like hornets. So this
flower imitates, uh, the pheromones of bee fear. And so
the hornets like, hey, I think there's a bee over
there that's scared of me. Let me go, uh, let
me go kill it, Let me go do whatever hornet's
due to Beas what do they do they kill him?
(26:25):
I think they sting him? Do they sting him? Or
to hornets bite? Now hornets sting? They sting? Uh? And
so it lures it over there because I think there's
a scared be and in fact there's nothing there but
the orchid going, welcome, hornet, leave your junk here, right,
and he does and already picks up the pollinium does
(26:47):
the same thing to another flower. So um, and then
one of the things that Paullen pointed out Michael Paullen
pointed out was saying, pollen, which one is it? Well,
I don't think so eminently you're thinking, so, yeah, but
which one is it? Do you know how to pronounce
his name correctly? Poland? We'll just say that just to
(27:09):
keep it from getting confusing. So what Michael Poland pointed
out was that, um, if you look at the types
of orchids like the orfice epiph era, if you look
at like the same orchids from the same variety, does
they'll they're slightly different. So it's clearly it looks like
the bee from behind and the pheromones that they're putting
(27:30):
out are the same as well, but they're slightly different.
And they're just different enough so that bees don't learn
to just avoid those flowers because they're being tricked every time.
So they it's it's just just different enough so that
the bees can't learn that. I think just think that's fascinating. Well, here,
did you read that Darwin article I sent you? Uh?
(27:52):
Did you send meyone? I didn't get it. Maybe I
didn't send this one. Sorry, yeah, you didn't send it.
It's okay, tell me about it. It's called moth Tongu's
orchids and Darwin they're predicted power of evolution and basically
back in the day eighteen sixty two, a British orchid
grower sent Darwin Um some orchids from Madagascar and said,
look at these things. Aren't they amazing? They have a
(28:13):
nectary which is like a foot long, and Darwin's like,
he writes back, he wrote to a friended q Q
Garden's kW which is wonderful, wonderful public garden in London,
which I went to with Emily and Um, and that
they had a quite an orchid collection there, of course
because they raided the world for years. Uh and he said,
(28:36):
he he wrote and said in Madagascar there must be
moths with the proboscis capable of extension to a length
between ten and eleven inches, because like that's the only
explanation here. Well yeah, and he was defending his new
theory of natural selection well and co evolution specifically, so
he positive these things are co evolving. And not only that,
(28:58):
he literally predicted had this new species that he that
no one had ever seen before. As it turns out,
there is a moth. In nineteen o seven, twenty years
after Darwin died, the subspecies of the gigantic congo moth
from Madagascar uh was identified that had this long proboscis
like twelve inches long. And they were like, hey, this
(29:21):
has got to be the thing. Like, I think Darwin
was right. But it wasn't until about a hundred years
later that they finally literally observed on camera this moth
feeding the flower. And Darwin was like, from his grave,
told you so. Yeah, he said, boo yah, how about that,
like a hundred and thirty years after he first suggested
(29:43):
this was all all proved out. That is pretty cool.
It's awesome that Darwin. He was a heck of a guy.
He's kind of smart, you know, he was a little smart.
I've got one more and this is just so Remember
we said there's twenty five thousand species. Yeah, we're not
gonna go through them. No, I want to go go
over one more though, called um Bulba phyl Um bakari
(30:07):
and it it's um pollination is aided by flies and
carrying beetles, and what attracts carrying beetles and flies, well,
rotting flesh because it's where flies feed and that's where
they lay their eggs that turn into maggots. Right, So
the flower puts out the smell of rotting meat to
(30:30):
attract the specific type of of pollinator so that it
can it can be pollinated. Let's I'm just insane. All right,
you want to take another break? Yeah, all right, we're
gonna take another break and come back and talk a
little bit about the fact that vanilla is an orchid
and other amazing facts. Alright, So vanilla is an orchid.
(31:14):
Moving on, that was an amazing fact. It is an
amazing fact. Like, who knew. I mean a lot of people,
but I didn't know. The flavoring is um, it's the
it's the seeds, Yeah, it's it's the vanilla bean. Obviously,
it's not like they grind up those sweet petals of
the flower. Yeah, but it's not even the outside of
(31:34):
the bean. It's the little tiny seeds inside. That's where
the vanilla flavor comes from. Yeah, there's this fascinating anecdote.
I can't remember the gist of it, but it's in
that that book, the Derito effect that I talked about before,
where they he was talking about the the origin of vanilla,
imitation vanilla and how they just changed the world. Basically,
(31:55):
apparently the vanilla market was crashing and somebody came in
at just the right time propped it up. Yeah, propped
it up with the imitation vanilla. But go again, go
check that book out. It's amazing. Well, are you talking
to me or everyone else? Uh? So let's talk about
some Let's talk about how to care for an orchid.
(32:15):
Just in case anybody said, you know what, I'm gonna
go to my local big box retailer. Even better, I'm
gonna go to my local, locally owned mom and pop
nursery and buy an orchid today, my local orchiddery. Yeah,
this is what you want to look for, Okay. Um, Well,
(32:37):
first of all, when you when you look at the
orchid itself, it might give you a few clues as
to what it needs care wise, um, right off the bat,
like and and these are broad um. I mean, if
you're an expert, obviously you know a lot about it.
But these are just some kind of broad things to
look for. If if it doesn't have many leaves, or
if the leaves are kind of leathery, um, then it
(32:59):
probably needs more light than maybe another variety. Yes, and
if the leaves are limp and soft, uh, it probably
maybe is a little light sensitive. And maybe you don't
throw it on your sun deck. Yeah. And and you
should probably ask the person you're buying the orchid from.
Oh yeah, do all that you know, don't us and
(33:20):
expect to walk away with complete knowledge. Yeah. So again
you're probably going to find if you look in the
potting medium. There are terrestrial orchids, but I've never seen
one in real life. I've only read about him on
the internet. You know, have you ever seen an orchid
in soil and dirt? Uh? Just I've just read about
it in legend right, same here, same here. I've always
(33:44):
seen him in like sphagnum moss or something like that.
You can also find it in like coconut husk, fiber
just all. Apparently styrofoam beads work just fine. Because the
point is the orchid isn't getting any of its nutrients,
or getting very very little of its new nutrients from
the growing medium. It's that which is why you need
(34:04):
to fertilize it, like basically weakly, because that's where it's
going to get it's um it's nutrients from So the
growing medium matters in that what you're what you're doing
is providing a lot of aeration for the roots of
the the um orchid, which don't they since they don't
grow underground, they're exposed to air and light and all
(34:26):
that stuff, which is totally fine, But that means you
don't want to cover them up too much with the
growing medium. You want to let them run free. Um
and and so that's the purpose of the growing medium itself. Yeah,
you don't want to grow an orchid in a rubber
bladder full of red clay. That's a that's dead. That's
a dead orchid. Uh. Those fleshy roots that you see there,
(34:46):
they have these white cells that they're covered with called velamen,
and they're just sponges that absorb all the nutrients and
all the water. Uh. And it's also a coding that
helps protect moisture loss from heat, even though they generally
like light and they like warm environments. You just it's
you know, they are sort of delicate. You don't wanna
you don't want to bake them in the hot Georgia
(35:08):
sun all day. Now. Very there are very few orchids,
and you're probably going to be like an orchid enthusiast.
By the time you really come across an orchid that
likes lots of intense sun, most of them, for the
most part, are they like sun, but it's gonna best
be indirect, like maybe in a window that gets a
little bit of sun. Um. And then the high humidity
(35:31):
I think is is not across the board, because there's
orchids that live like in mountainous areas where you know,
it's kind of rocky and desert and arid um. But
the most of the orchids you find, like you're gonna
find at the store in the United States or you know,
the UK, they're they're probably tropical. So they want high
(35:51):
humidity on the order of like and they want temperatures
daytime temperatures of at least eighty degrees fair high God
knows what that is in celsius. And then they want
like twelve to fourteen hours of daylight. Chance of brain yeah. Uh,
like I mentioned, they do, they need to be water
(36:13):
but like you said, they really like. The way to
kill an orchid is to overwater it or to not
have your drainage. Right. Um, a water logged orchid is
no good. No, apparently they can tolerate drought better than overwater,
much better. So um, again you want to water weekly.
You want to wait until the growing medium dries out
(36:33):
again and then water it. And since you're fertilizing it,
you you it's damaging to put fertilizer onto dry orchid
roots apparently, right, so, which is why you only want
to use liquid fertilizer with orchids, but you also want
to pre water it. You want the orchids to to
be already wet when you use the fertilizer. The next day,
(36:56):
dilute that liquid fertilizer two right, Yeah. The the rule
of thumb that I was told was you wanna um
fertilize weekly weekly, so w e a k yt Yeah, okay,
I don't even need to finish it. So um, I
use a orchid fertilizer which smells so bad. It smells
(37:17):
like it smells like concentrated like rodent p and it
kind of looks like a to actually like dried out
concentrated rodent p um. It could be, but apparently that's
what orchids like. Because it's keep in mind going, but
you it says to use like a teaspoon for a
gallon of water. So I use like three quarters of
(37:39):
a teaspoon for a gallon of water, and it seems
to work pretty well. And use that gallon for all
your orchids or you just keep that stored. Uh no, no,
I will. So I'll water them until like they're nice
the growing mediums nice and wet, and then I'll come
the next day and they'll just kind of like give it,
you know, a couple of the couple of turns a
couple of glugs on each orchid just to get it
(38:02):
around there. I don't soak them with it, so it
depends on, you know, how heavy handed I am from
week to week, and they don't seem to mind one
way or another. Sometimes I'll use the whole gallon, but
most of the time it's like half to two thirds
of the gallon I'll use to fertilize it. Do you
talk to them, I don't think so not. I'm not
(38:24):
conscious of it if I do, but that's I might.
Who knows, I'm pretty pretty insane. It's possible I talked
to him and don't realize that, you know what I mean,
Not like I'm I'm talking to them and they're talking back,
but it's entirely possible. I say things to them and
I'm not aware. Okay, but you you don't, like you
haven't named them and make an effort to speak to them.
(38:46):
O my crackpot. Come on, I don't know. I don't
mind that. You want to hear something weirder than that, though,
some ridiculously high percentage of dog owners don't talk to
their dogs. What do you mean, like something like I
want to say I will have to look it up.
But some more than half of dog owners don't talk
(39:10):
to their dogs, Like they don't give them orders or
they don't say your tweet bath. So they might give
them orders like sit or come on, let's go or
something like that, but they're they're not also like all right,
we're almost there, are um? Yeah, they're just not like
not not whatever is in between those two things. They're
not doing that. They're not talking to their dog. I
(39:30):
just find that bizarre. I mean, I'm yelling at my
dogs half the time. Are in the other half of them?
You know, I'm talking to a stupid boys. You don't
yell at your dogs. You yell at your dogs. Yeah,
I didn't know that. Yeah, of course, what do you say.
You yell like I love you so much? No, I
(39:52):
yelled Nico get off of me. Good God, stop it. Okay,
that's a pretty cute. Yeah, I mean it's not cute.
Like what do you do? Wh dog is in your face,
like chewing your hair and like scraping, scratching your chest
And are you threatened him with the baby gun? Yeah,
that's like the puppy bounder. No. I never hit my dogs,
(40:13):
but man, I yelled them all the time. They're all like,
Nico is just so needy. Is that your shelty? No, no, no, no,
Charlie's great. She never needs to get yelled at. Nico's
just needy, and like, uh, like jumps on people and
you know there's no way a dog can jump on someone.
And you're like, would you please get off of that person?
(40:35):
Oh sure, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you go get down. Yeah,
I got you. I see what you're saying that that
kind of stuff, not yelling like I hate you because
I'm upset in my own life, right right, Yeah, that's
what I was after, Like, I hate my job. It's
all your fault. Um, Hey, did I tell you that
(40:55):
we did a DNA test? On little Momo and she's
like ten percent shelty, Oh really yeah, And we were like,
well that explains her hurting us towards the door. Like
if if one of us is getting ready to go out,
she'll go and get the other one just kind of
like push push him toward the door. Is she also, um,
just very aware of where everyone is at all times,
(41:16):
like checks on everything. Yeah, Like if I go to
bed first, you mean, Momo will go to bed with me.
And then like if if if Momo decides that you
me stayed up long enough, she'll come out in the
doorway and kind of look at her like all right,
it's time to go to bed, She'll come and get you. Yeah.
And does she sit in the window and bark at
everything if if she had a window to bark out of, yes,
(41:39):
but we live in a windowless box, right, So that's
Charlie's main job. Is she just sits on the sun
room sofa looking out the window as if it is
her post. Yeah, and she'll bark at yeah this this
Charlie Barkett birds no, just like people and other dogs.
I mean, and literally like it's her job. You can
(42:00):
tell she's not a jerk. She's just like, I'm on
duty is what we call it, you know, understood, Yeah,
it's tell her to clock out, clock out, Charlie. Does
she listen, come to bed? Have you tried yelling at
at her? No, she's she doesn't need yelling, like A said,
said clock out Charlie. Um, all right, So back to orchids.
(42:21):
Potting and repotting orchids generally, unless you have to repot
an orchid, don't repot an orchid just because you're like, yeah,
I'm kind of sick of that pot. Let me put
it in a new one, right, because they say, oh, yeah,
I'm not very happy with that. I'm not going to
I'm not going to send up another flower for at
least a year. Yeah, they don't like getting repotted. Um,
(42:41):
but if you have to report, uh, I mean, what's
your advice. I'm actually I've not had that much trouble reporting. Um. Yeah,
like I guess, I guess they don't immediately that Actually,
to tell you the truth, now that you asked me,
that that explains why some of them haven't flowered for
(43:02):
so long, because I have repotted them here there, but
I was over watering them and it was kind of
vital that I did repot them because their roots were decaying.
So if you have an orchid that you realize you've overwatered.
And this is when I learned not to use sphagnum
moss any longer because it really holds in water. And
that's the great thing about the pine bark is that
(43:24):
it just lets the water go right through it hangs
onto some of it. But you're the point is to
just water and orchid as frequently as it needs it,
rather than watering it and letting the soil hold the
water and for it right. So the sphagnum moss was
holding that that water in and the roots were rotting,
so I had to repot it. I had to trim
off some of the old roots, and then I learned
this trick somewhere on the internet. But I dusted the
(43:47):
roots that were rotted with cinnamon, and I think cinnamon
might be an anti microbial or something like that. But brother,
my orchid loved me for that, Thank you so much.
Started growing almost immediately, even though I just repotted it
and cut off a significant number of its roots. Yeah,
so it's vital to repotted sometimes. But yeah, like you said,
(44:10):
you don't want to just be like, I think I'll
switch it to this pot for this month because I
like yellow in the spring. Yeah exactly, Yeah, Um, what
else you got anything else? No? I think you said
that growing it from seed is next to impossible, so
it's just go buy one. Yeah, i'd like to hear
from h I'm sure there's some horticulturists who have done that.
(44:32):
I'd like to hear about that experience. Yeah, I'd like
to hear all the things I got wrong. You're like,
chuck me out at your dog, right, and we would also.
I think we kind of touched on it at the
very beginning. But I've got to give a shout out
to the article The Orchid Thief and the movie that
was based on adaptation. Yeah, I don't think we can
(44:52):
uh like in our in our stupid article. It's a
orchids in pop culture, the movie While or Kid with
Mickey Rourke and gry Oates like, are you kidding me? Like?
There was an entire movie written about orchid hunting and
the super rare ghost orchid that John Laroche hunts in
(45:15):
the wild swamps of Florida by the great writer Susan Orlean,
and it was not even mentioned. No, you know, I
got a story about that. My friend Stacy works. It's
a costumer in the film industry, and she worked on adaptation.
And about a year before she started work, I was
just into reading any and all scripts I could read
(45:37):
at the time. And she said, I got a new script.
It's called The Orchid Thief by some uh dude named
Charlie Kaufman. It's like, all right, And I read it
in a night. I couldn't put it down, and I
called her up the next day. I was like, I've
never read anything like this in my life. There hadn't
been anything like that, Like this is unlike any movie
I've ever heard of. And I have no idea what
(45:58):
I just read. I know. And then they changed the
name from worka deep to adaptation and it's one of
my favorites. It's great. Charlie Kaufman needs to get back
to work now he's working. What's he doing now? Did
you see? Uh? And I'm a Lisa, Yeah, that was
like three years ago. That's what I'm saying, get to work, Kaufman.
I'm sure he's working on something. I hope so, uh yeah,
(46:19):
I love the adaptation. Chris Cooper that performs is one
of my favorite acting roles of all time. Yeah, they
couldn't have couldn't have cast it better than that. God,
he was great. Yeah, well that's uh, that's adaptation, as
was Nick Cage. I don't want to short change him. No,
and of course Meryl Streep, I mean, does it even
need to be said? Yeah, but Nick Cage can he
gets a lot of crap. But well he oh sure
(46:46):
yeah yeah, the wicker Man remake. That was not the
least of him. If you go on to Netflix, he's
on like every third third movie on Netflix. Yeah, he's
making bank. Brother, I don't know if you can maybe
he's definitely keeping his head above water. Well he's spindy,
so how is that what it is? Yeah? Apparently he
(47:07):
is quite a reputation for buying ridiculous things. M hm,
that cost a lot of dough. Well you got anything else?
And now I've got nothing else? All right? Well, uh,
welcome Slash. I'm sorry to all of the new people
who have never heard this podcast before but are into
orchids and thought they'd give it a try. Uh And
(47:27):
if you want to know more about orchids, you can
type that word in the search part how stuff works
dot Com. Since I said that it's time for a
listener mail speaking of all the things you just said
and listener mail. Did you see that one from the guy?
He said that we were just dilettants and kind of
laid into us. Yeah, you go just dilettants and all
(47:48):
you do is just talked like forty minutes about an
overview about things right and email them back. It's like,
you got it, buddy, Yeah, that's exactly what we are.
His complaint was that each episode is about a different topic. Yeah.
I was like, and then we just give the broadest
of overviews over forty five minutes. I was like, that
is our show to a t. Yeah, you should write
(48:08):
our buyook. Keep looking, buddy, I wish him. Well, that
was nice of you. That's that's world class, Chuck. All right,
I'm gonna call this flight attendant response. Surprisingly, the bet
show kind of blew up. We got a lot of
responses from airline workers and flight attendants and passengers, and
most of them were angry either. I think we did
(48:29):
good on that one. So here we go, flight attendant here,
thank you for the awesome podcast. It was really on point.
I was impressed the amount of research and how much
you got it right. You both asked for someone to
weigh on whether we're paid for delays the cabin door closed.
The answer is yes. We can even be paid a
percentage for delays with the cabin door open, but it
has to be over a certain amount of time with
customers on board, and we have to file the request ourselves.
(48:53):
Most people don't because it's not much money and not
worth it. Secondly, there was and this is with uh
this per Sin's airline right, So I don't know if
that's true across the board. Is it a major airline? Well,
just let me finish. Secondly, there was some debate over
whether we needed to score an eighty or ninety and training. Actually,
you're both right. We have to score at least an
(49:13):
eighty on the first take. If we fail, we have
to score ninety on the retake. Thank you for doing
an episode on our profession. The things could be better.
We love our jobs and have a great time. But
see you all on a flight sometime soon. And Chuck,
the whiskey will be on me. Sorry, Josh, no peanuts.
That is from Daniel, flight attendant, major airline. Everything's always
(49:35):
coming up, Chuck, I bet you can get your whiskey too,
my friend, that'd be great. Well, thanks a lot, Daniel.
I'll be sure to go check the email out and
figure out what an email or what airline you work for,
and then start flying it and hope we crossed paths.
I can get some free whiskey too. If you want
to offer us free whiskey, we are all ears. You
can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter,
(49:58):
and there's also an official s Y s K podcast page.
I also have a website, by the way, Are you
serious Clark dot com. You can find Chuck on Facebook
at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at the official stuff
you Should Know Facebook page. You can send all of us,
including Jerry, an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(50:24):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
that how Stuff Works dot com
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