Orchidfest 2008

I'm awfully late posting this. I went to Orchidfest 2008 last weekend, at the Hall of Flowers at the edge of Golden Gate Park. I actually enjoyed Orchidfest so much more than The Pacific Orchid Expo, which was held at Fort Mason in February. I know it's comparing apples and oranges, because the Pacific Orchid Expo was HUUUGE. It's like of like comparing New York City with San Francisco, which, for some reason, people in San Francisco do ALL THE TIME... you just can't compare, because New York City is just its own huge, stunning, incomparable thing that I can't even really wrap my mind around.

But I digress.

Orchidfest was great because it was intimate and had a friendly feel. The orchid sellers weren't mobbed, so they were super friendly, patient and very open to sharing their knowledge and lore. DD and I bought 6 raffle tickets for $5, but we didn't win the raffle... it seemed like our chances were good, because there weren't many people there yet, and there were going to be several plants given away. It looked like lot of the volunteers won. I watched one guy choose the plant I would have chosen had I won, and I congratulated him (while suppressing the desire to knock him down and take his plant) while he gloated. I think DD felt a little sorry for me at that point, because he kindly bought me everything I wanted!

Two very sweet men showed me that these "Twinkle" oncidiums (bottom) smell like chocolate. They had red, yellow and pink, and they said the red smells like milk chocolate and the yellow and pink smell like white chocolate and they smell heavenly when placed together. They only emit their fragrance during the warmer part of the day; the growers told me they start around 11 am and intensify as the afternoon wears on, and then they "turn off" as it becomes evening. I took a red and a yellow. The individual flowers are each so tiny; smaller than a person's pinkie nail.

The other plant I got was this very trippy orchid called a "coelogyne". It only blooms upside down like this (1st photo), so you have to get underneath the plant to see it full-on (2nd photo). It only makes one flower at a time, and then a new one forms and the old one falls off. The plant keeps doing this, and the stalk gets longer and longer and forms a zigzag pattern. It was definitely not the flashiest, most colorful orchid there, not by a long shot. But I loved its quiet weirdness, and so, I took it home.