The Writhlington Orchid Project

Orchid seeds are incredible.  One orchid seed pod can have up to 2.6 million seeds in.  This is a brilliant survival technique for the orchid, but such an advantage comes at a price.  Each orchid seed must be invaded by a mycorrhizal fungas.  The orchid seed then uses the fungas to give it the energy [...]

That’s right people! We’re now reaching the final stages of the ‘Orchid celebration evening’ preparations here at the Writhlington Orchid Project.  This includes tidying plants for the display stand and putting together our presentations for you on our past expeditions.
This will include a presentation from the Durban team, who’s blog you have been following on [...]

Well, this day was penciled into our diaries a while ago and it’s finally dawned on us that it’s now quickly approaching!
Our Orchid Celebration Evening is a great oppertunity for you to meet and get information from our growers of all ages.  We will have talks throughout the evening about recent expeditions, along with plant [...]

Today has been another very busy day. The congress started at 8:30 with speeches, two brilliant school choirs and then lectures. Laurens lecture was great and we also heard about work with medicinal plants in South Africa and other projects all over the world. As you can see we have put up our display and [...]

The orchid project expedition to Durban, South Africa and the BGCI is now fast approaching!  Zoe and Zoe, along with Simon and Dr Lauren Gardiner (who you may remember from our Sikkim expedition) are flying out this Friday (30th).
During this period the team out there will be taking over my job of blogging – meaning [...]

One of the major contributing factors to the extinction of orchid species is Global warming. Many orchids are happy when in a very narrow temperature band (as many of you will have witnessed when growing orchids at home). In many mountainous regions such as the Sikkim Himalayas, this temperature is achieved by altitude [...]