Orchid Festival At Kew

The orchid festival at Kew Gardens in London began on 7 February and continues to 8 March 2026. So if you are local, there’s still time to catch it.

Tamara and I went a couple of days ago.

Heere’s an interesting little snippet. The word “orchid” comes from the Ancient Greek orkhis, meaning ‘testicle’.

It was coined by the botanist Theophrastus, who named it from the twin tubers of European orchids that resemble human testicles.

When European botanists explored further afield and discovered exotic orchids, the association shifted from the tubers to the vulvar look of the flowers.

The orchids in the orchid festival were from China, and we could see repeatedly, five petals as a backdrop for the main event that displays itself for the world to see, like in this Oncidium hastatum, which is one of many, many hybrids that specialists have grown.

That said, some are more modest, like the delicate pink Cymbidium, with petals that cover the main event rather than peeling back to display it.

Even without hybridisation there are an around thirty thousand species. And for them to grow successfully they are dependent on the fungal network in the soil.

No funghi; no orchids – at least not in the wild.

Orchids depend on mycorrhizal fungi, which form a mat-like network of hyphae in the soil and around the plant roots. Without the mat, the orchid could not take in nutrients and water.

What the mycorrhizal fungi get in exchange are products the orchids make through photosynthesis.

The thing is that each species of orchid is particular about which mycorrhizal fungi it will work with.

Gather two grams of soil from around the roots of the orchid and there are more than five hundred fungus species.

And that is a problem for English botanists of wild flowering orchids. In the case of the Lady’s slipper orchid, there is just one left of the wild. So which fungus is it associated with?

To solve the problem and reintroduce Lady’s slipper orchids into the wild, botanists are working the other way around by growing orchids in agar, then planting them out in nature to see which survive. And then seeing which fungus is preponderant over a number of orchids. It is a long business, taking years.

And it is all happening behind the scenes at Kew.