@brittarnhild
Six weeks ago @kewgardens wrote on instagram that the world´s largest orchid was blooming. I knew then that I was going to London this week and wrote them back, asking how long they though it would bloom. I was advised to contact the gardens via emails, something I did of course. Then I never heard back from them and had kind of given up the whole idea, but on our last day in Dublin, actually it was while we were sitting on the bus out to the airport, I wrote another email. And not long afterwards I was booked to an orchid tour behind the scenes.
So today, some minutes before 1pm I followed the given instructions - Please meet your guide at the allotted time at the gate between Climbers and Creepers and the White Peaks café/shop There I met up with a handful others, among them the guide, a woman who told us she has about 50 orchids in her livingroom and a father and son, the father an avid orchid grower and a judge at orchid competitions.
Our guide was very enthusiastic, never still enough for me to take a photo of her, and filled with so much interesting information, all I could to was smiling from ear to ear. I loved it!
In 1983 the two biologists Phillip Cribb and Christopher Bailes found this spesifuc orchid, the grammatophyllum speciosum, in Sabah in Malaysia, and brought it home to Great Britain and Kew Gardens. Since then it has been growing, but never blooming. Not until August 2015!
After the information we were taken, two by two, over to the plant.
Amazing!
And I am so glad I made it. Today was the last day of behind the scenes visits :-)
Here you can read more about the plant.
There will be more Kew posts in
and in
......eventually
