History
Cultivation of orchids started in England in 19th century. Orchids were brought to Europe by companies or individuals who had financed collecting expeditions. Commissioned professional collectors would travel for months all over the world in search of rare new species. These expensive expeditions were often shrouded in secrecy and it was not unusual for collectors to spread misleading information about the locations where new orchids were found. New exotic orchids were most often sold at auction in London, fetching extravagant prices. During this time very little was known about the cultivation of orchids and their survival rate was dismal. Through experimentation and by gathering more information on the growing conditions of orchids in their natural habitat, knowledge was slowly being developed and by 1851 B. S. Williams published the first edition of “The Orchid Grower’s Manual”. Today, the collecting of orchids in the wild is now banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) adopted in 1973. Still some orchids are endangered. Orchid smuggling is thought to contribute to the loss of some species of orchid in the wild.
Read more about this topic: Orchidelirium
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)