Orchid care brings me both joy and sorrow

Promoting Chinese orchid culture and spreading orchid knowledge

We orchid growers probably all share a common mindset: a deep love for orchids. For the orchids we love, even though spending money hurts, we still spend generously and are determined to get them. Nowadays, the orchid diggers in the mountains are becoming more and more cunning; any wild-collected plant they bring down with even a slight petal shape is a solitary seedling or single plant, none of them connected as one clump, and the pulled-off back bulbs are propagated to produce shoots and then sold the following year. Solitary seedlings and single plants like these are very difficult to grow; not only is the sprouting rate low, but the diggers do not know how to divide properly and the wounds from rough breaking are hard to heal in a short time, so the risk of loss is high. Two plants for three hundred yuan, truly a lion opening its mouth wide and asking an exorbitant price. The whole family's hard work over several days, climbing many mountain ridges just to find a few decent plants, is truly exhausting. Nowadays, orchid growers' taste requirements rise year by year, and we diggers feel the difficulty is great; orchid plants before the people's era were indeed not easy to find, and during the slack farming season orchid diggers are all over the mountains and plains. The few mountain ridges near our place have few plants, and in the end after both sides haggled, it was still out of regard for old friendship that a little less was charged. Although the plant material was a bit thin, I was basically quite satisfied and delighted to obtain a single variegated plant.

In today's development trend of orchid growing, people are slowly advancing toward a higher level, pursuing mid-to-high-grade and rare varieties. Ordinary common plants not only fail to fetch a price but basically nobody asks about them. So the remaining few bags of ordinary plants naturally made me worry about orchids. If they cannot all be sold, there is no telling where they will be tossed, ending up in the trash bin. Amid the joy, let me talk about the issue of orchid resources. The popularization of orchid growing inevitably leads to endless digging, causing a shortage of orchid resources. Protecting resources and restraining harvesting is the true path for developing orchids. Orchids grow in mountainous areas; how many years does it take for a single orchid, a clump of orchids, to go from patch to patch and form expanse after expanse? How cruel it is for us humans to destroy them artificially, digging orchids endlessly year after year without spending any capital - when will it ever end? At present, many scholars and experts are loudly calling from many sides that protecting resources and protecting ecological balance is an important path for the common development of humanity and nature. But year after year without restraint, how terrifying it is that humans destroy resources; however rich the orchid resources, they will gradually disappear. In the pain and worry, one feels the responsibility to protect orchid resources is heavy and imperative.

At present, from our place, one can see that during the peak orchid season many diggers throw away unsold plants everywhere, what a pity. Judging from the distribution of orchid resources in the mountainous areas, the destruction is quite serious. In the outer mountains there are basically very few cymbidium and Chinese orchid plants, and it is hard to see orchid plants forming patches, blocks or clumps. Digging has advanced into the deep mountains, and in the overall push, indiscriminate digging destroys resources and causes ecological imbalance; in seriously affected places there is a state of disruption. Especially we orchid growers must cherish orchids, and diggers must care for them and establish a protection awareness to control and restrain indiscriminate digging.

We orchid growers must first be good propagandists and change the mindset of orchid diggers. Many diggers generally believe that "orchids grow in China and resources are naturally that abundant, as plentiful as the water in the rivers and weirs when it rains, inexhaustible." Protection, resources - they simply do not understand, and never even think about it. For example, since ancient times the Yellow River basin was one of the earlier regions where Chinese civilization originated. Several thousand years ago our ancestors cultivated and lived here; the land was fertile, forests lush, products abundant, ecological resources balanced, and natural vegetation grew abundant plants. Because of reckless felling of vegetation during the periods when successive dynasties established their capitals, it was hard for vegetation to recover; plants struggled to survive, and today it is hard to see the scene of "the waters of the Yellow River come from the sky, rushing to the sea and never returning." Now the Yellow River often runs dry, and in the upper reaches of the Yellow River basin one sees bare loess gullies. The green plateau is gone, soil erosion is severe, and ecological balance is disrupted. Is this not a regret and a lesson left by history?

The formation of resources is a long process, and destruction does not happen overnight either but over a long period of formation. Humans are members of nature; human survival and nature are blended and interdependent. Humans are both protectors and destroyers, and a slight carelessness endangers plant habitats and makes it hard for them to multiply and spread. In the slow process of sprouting, budding and flowering, orchid plants need at least more than three years. Heaven and earth have feeling but humans are ruthless; the flowers and grasses God granted to humanity must not be destroyed by human hands. In some places orchid plants are shipped out by the whole truckload, and at the same time sold cheaply by the whole jin, just like scallions, garlic and cabbage. With this abnormal blind digging, in not many years it will be hard to find a trace of orchids. At present, orchid growing is fashionable, and the generally increasing and persistent trend of orchid growing leads to a gradual increase in diggers, making it hard for orchids to reproduce quickly. If people only care about digging, who will value and protect orchid resources? In management, people should consciously arrange things in a planned and measured way like mountain villagers making charcoal: burn this mountain this year and that mountain next year, giving resources time to breathe.

Consciously form a protection awareness. Therefore, protecting orchid resources must start at the source, be blocked in circulation, and the whole society must join in managing it together. Let everyone reach a consensus, as with protecting endangered animals, to gain social attention, enact legislation and establish regulations, and build more artificial propagation bases. Implement developing orchids to drive orchid cultivation, take the policy of combining cultivation with business operation, collect extinct varieties, and within control attach importance to protection. Only by intensifying publicity and strengthening management can Chinese orchids multiply and thrive for generations, and can the generations of humanity all come to enjoy their elegant beauty.