July: What’s Blooming in the Office?

For the most part, orchids are hardy plants that let you know fairly quickly if they aren’t happy. Leaves turn yellow rather suddenly, or start looking like someone tried to fold them into accordion pleats.

My orchids seem to hunker down this time of year, resigned to getting through it at the hands of a caretaker who’s usually pretty good at noticing what they need – unless, of course, she’s on a deadline.

It isn’t so much the heat that gets to them as the lack of humidity. So, my orchid-care routine must change a bit to accommodate summer in southwest Idaho.

In my office, where most of the plants live, I try to run the humidifier for a couple hours every day, and increase watering to twice weekly.

Keeping trays full of water beneath each shelf of plants adds extra moisture to the air.

There’s only one bloomer this month, and it’s an odd one, with spikes of tiny pink flowers that stick out horizontally from a gangly body. Ascocentrum christensonianum is a type of Vanda, a native of Vietnam and named for the eccentric U.S. botanist Eric Christianson.

To me, the plant is as unique as Christianson himself, renowned for his encyclopedic knowledge of orchids and his world travels to discover new species.

He died in 2011, but I like to think a little bit of his spirit lives on in the plant that I usually hang directly above my kitchen sink so I’ll remember to water it almost every day. Ascocentrum thrives at humidity levels over 75 percent!

The fact that it’s blooming in this bone-dry Idaho July is proof that anyone can beat the odds.