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How Orchids Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan, there's Jerry rolling back
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: again with us, and everything is back to normal. I
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: can stop trembling and foaming at the mouth like little
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Danny in the Shining when he was all freaked out.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about? You know what I'm talking about?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Remember when Danny's like just send there, zoned out, like
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: seeing I think the blood coming out of the elevator.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Why are you doing that right now? Because Jerry wasn't
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: around for a while. Remember we had guest producer no
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: who's great, but he's not Jerry. No. I mean, Jerry
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: is uh lovely person inside and out. And Noel looks
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: like somebody that might be falling around a parking lot
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in a trench coat sometimes does, but it's beautiful inside
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and under the trench coup. And I'm just kidding, nol
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: uh So orchids is what we're talking about today, Chuck. Yeah,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: how you doing? I'm doing good. I'm feeling like nice
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and mellow because I just I researched orchids all morning.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: You huff some orkids. M I snorted the orchids. Uh,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: this in in real time, just so that people know
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: is our last recording of the year. How's that for
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: a brain buster because it's coming out in the new year. Yeah,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: because we like to take it easy in December. That's
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: annual stuff. You should know. Tradition is mellow December one month, chuck.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We we were one December. We closed down almost for
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: like the entire month. Do you remember? It was great?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And hey, I think we I think we recorded on
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: like December two or third, and then that was it
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: until like the beginning of January. Yeah. We love doing
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: this and we love our job, but like any job,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: it is also very nice to not do it for
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a few It's like it's like, um, those cocktail wheenies
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you might encounter at a Christmas party or a a holiday
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: party this year. You know, you eat like a pound
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and a half of them, You're doing fine. You have
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: two pounds of them, You're like, I need to take
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: a break for a couple of minutes. It's just like that.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I just made those for Mike party. I love those
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: chuff I made them with Uh. I did the Martha
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Stewart recipe. No way, it's slightly fancier than you're running
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the mill recipe. What does she do to those to
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: make them faints? Well, the uh use like a philo
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: like puff pastry dough instead of your stah. So that's
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: that's a little different than I'm talking about. But what else, well, nothing,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: You know, you roll up the little smokey's, you brush
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the inside with a little like honey mustard, roll up
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the little smoky's, and then you brush the top with
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: egg because that's how you get a scrambled eggs. That's
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: how you get that good golden brown. And then I
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: dusted mine with a little rosemary, se salt and sesame seed. Wow.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And then you bake them up, cut him into thirds
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and throw them in. I bought my first chafing dish
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of my life. You have a chafing dish? No, you
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: got me beat. I have a cock pot that doubles
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: as a chafing dish. That's the best I can come
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: up for man's shaping dish. Yeah, I guess that I
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: was way more excited than a middle aged man should
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: be about his first shaping dish. I gotta say that, No,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: it is pretty impressive. Is it scalloped like the edges
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and all that? Is it ornator? Is it like modern
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and clean? No, it's like the stainless steel oval. It's
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: not square or like it has It's not a two banger.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It's just you know, I threw my my sausage balls
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and my uh pigs in a blanket, both in there
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: together because it's all pork. Actually, I think the little
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: smokies were beef. How they think about it? Oh God,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: But it kept it hot all night long. You know
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: that's great. Well, that's what the chafing dish is supposed
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: to do, you know. But in years path Us I
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: would just put out the hot stuff and say, well,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: eat it now or in thirty minutes. You can eat
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: it cold when you're good and drunk, and if you've
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: got any complaints, get out. That's how you're famous for
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: saying at your Christmas parties. So chuck what you've just
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: described as delicious. I'm talking about you know, if you
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: just took those smokey's and put them in like a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: delicious sauce. Oh that that old trick. Yeah that I mean,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I'll I'll eat what you're making every day of the week. Yeah,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: These things are like, that's like manna from heaven. That
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: tangy what is it? It's not just barbecue sauce. That's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: sort of like, I don't know, some mystery gravy. It's
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: got a little something extra in it. Martha Stewart probably knows. Well.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I did sort of the dry version, because there's also
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the sausage balls that you can have floating in that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: stuff too. I'll eat those two. That's fine with me.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's mostly the sauce. You can put anything
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: in there and I'll eat it. Uh. Yeah, I did
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the dry pick in the blanket and then the dry
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: kind of the bis quick cheddar country else. Yea, man chuck,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: you were killing it this year, which, by the way,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: are good for breakfast with eggs for the next like
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: three days. I know. That's one of the great things
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: about throwing a holiday party, or really any party, but
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a holiday party, because there's usually a great spread, is
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the next day you get to just chow down. Yeah,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: but it's weird because literally for dinner, I've been eating
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: like blue cheese and pre judo and sugar cookies and bourbon. Man. Well,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that's that's what they call the holidays. Anyway, So orchids, man, Hey,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: do you have any orchids? No? But I am a big,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: big orchid fan. Okay, I don't own them because I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: don't want to kill them. That's how much I love
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: orchids is. I don't want them in my home because
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I will kill them dead. You're gonna love this episode then,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: because my friend I was once where you are, and
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: now I am an orchid raising fool. Oh really yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I've got a six orchids and my I'm not kidding
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: four of them right now? Have um flowers flowers stem
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: shooting up? Yes? Did you raise them from pups? Uh? No? No,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: they I mean they were like cuttings. But when I so,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. When I bought them, they weren't bloom.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Like when everyone buys an orchid, Well, it's it's in bloom, right, yeah,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And that's actually a good, good rule of thumb, as
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: we'll find out. But everyone buys an orchid in bloom,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and then the orchid goes out of bloom, the flower
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: dies away, and you're like, well that's it for the orchid,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and you throw it into the trash. No, but I mean,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: have you ever heard of anybody getting it to flower again.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I hadn't and now I'm one of those people who
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: has done that. Now I didn't know. I don't know
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: much about them. I just know that I go to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: every orchids show or exhibit in a city if they
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: have one, and I'm there. Okay, So so listen to this.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: It's really really simple. You go out and buy an orchid,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: bring it home and wait, wait, wait, yeah, you want
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to and bloom, and then once it stops blooming, it's
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: going to um. You're gonna be again. You're gonna be
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: tempted to just throw it away. You'll say, what use
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: are you to anyone? Now? But it's still alive plants.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: So at this point you're gonna commit to repotting it,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and you can probably reuse the pot. It came in
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a nice plastic pot that has lots of holes in it,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna take You're gonna pull off that moss
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that it came with. It probably came with sphagnum moss.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: You're gonna pull it off because it's really tough to
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: work with if you're a novice. And then you're going
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to put that they just the roots of the orchid
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: back into the pot with nothing in it, and then
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: you're gonna fill it in with wood chips orchid potting
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: mixed wood chips, and you're gonna put enough in there
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: to stabilize the orchid and it'll grow more and more
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: stable as it gets back used to its pot again.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But that's what you You You want to switch out the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: moss for the wood chips. You want to water them
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: once a week, and you want to fertilize them about
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: once a week too. So on to say, Saturday, you
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: water them and then on Sunday you water them with
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a little fertilizer. You do that once a week while
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: they're in their growth pattern or they're they're growing and
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: they're not dormant, and you will you will have happy orchids.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I promise you. It's it's way easier than you think.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Well I didn't think it was not easy. I just
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: an orchid. Once it loses its its leaves or it's flower,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: it's just a sad um vine twisty tied to a chopstick. Right.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: You want to give rid of the chopstick because it
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: is it's a depressing reminder of what was. It's true,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: But you want to hang on too because you're gonna
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: get that thing to flower again if you take it,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: like the orchid just challenged you to see if you
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: could get it to flower again. It makes it a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: fun little game. Yeah, that's one way to look at it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Your nemesis or like a friend in need, one of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the two. Yeah, but in kild is should not pick
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: a fight with me because I could choke the life
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: out of that skinny little thing. You could so fast.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So this this whole discussion about orchids, right, and the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: fact that like you can go buy them anywhere you want,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: from you know, one big box store to another big
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: box store, take your picture. You can find them at
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: every single nursery just about anywhere in the world. They
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: live in nature on six continents. But all the fact
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: that they're they're so ubiquitous and they're so cheap has
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: to do with um basically England's entrance into an orchid
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: craze in the Victorian era. Yeah, orchid Mania. In the
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, England would send orchid hunters all over
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the world to plunder these exotic flowers from Central and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: South America. That sounds like nineteenth century England. Yeah, to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the point where, uh, a lot of these were named
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: after these plunder rs or orchid hunters, which is kind
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: of stinks, you know when you think about it, because
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they already had great names in South America.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: They didn't just say, hey, future to be named flower
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: flower to be named later after English white man. Uh,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: they had great names, I bet. But so they went
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: down there and they would brag about this one guy,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Frederick Sanders, Frederick Sander, he was the royal orchid grower
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of Queen Victoria's England, and uh, he would, you know,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: he would write home and brag, like, trust me, there's
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: no more orchids left, I got them all. Yeah. But
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: but he was actually probably not too far off because
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: there's a lot, a lot, a lot of different orchid frieties.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I think there's like something I saw twenty thousand, I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: saw thousand. I've seen as high as thirty thousand species
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: of orchids around the world. There's two hundred thousand hybrid
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: versions since humans came into the picture. Um, but there's
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: not necessarily that many orchids for species. So these orchid
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: hunters were going and finding these things that were basically
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: considered one of a kind flowers as far as anyone
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: back in England was concerned, there was no other flower
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: that anybody they knew had ever seen that looked like this. Right,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So these were enormous status symbols and they fetched tens
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars sometimes in in mid nineteenth century
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: British money, not today's money. So they were basically like
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: you had to be royalty to own orchids at first
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: when they first started bringing them back to the UK. Yeah,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And how crappy is it that they wouldn't go down
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: there and be like, well, these are beautiful and amazing,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: like here, we're gonna take some and learn how to
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: propagate these and you keep the rest. They're like, okay,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: we're taking all these, thank you. Yeah, and let me
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: just set your village on fire for good measure on
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: my way out of town. So um, that's how the
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: orchid craz started out. And there's this pretty good article
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: by Michael Poland, the famous Omnivores Dilemma author. Um. He
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: wrote this back like two nine, called Love and Lies,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: and it's just basically him just waxing flowery about how
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: great orchids are and how deceptive they are and all
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the different ways they have of tricking other animals into
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and appollinating them. Um. But one of the points he makes,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: which is actually kind of legitimate, that not only have
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: like all these bees and wasps and other animals that
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: are tricked into pollinating orchids for various reasons. Yeah, not
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: only have they fallen under the orchids spelled. Probably the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: most successful thing orchids ever did was to manage to
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: beguile humans, because we've taken them and propagated them all
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: over the world. And now they've come down from tens
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars and and you know, or tens
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: of thousands of pounds I should say, in mid nineteenth
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: century pounds um two what ten twenty bucks depending on
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the size of the orchid, and you can get it
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: just about anywhere. And that's all because of humans can
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: get orchid out of a bubblegum machine these days. You
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: can be very specialized one, but you can. Uh. Well,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: let's take a break here because I'm pretty excited, uh,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: and I need to settle down, and then we'll come
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: back and talk about why we love these things so
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: much right after this, all right, So why humans love
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: or kids Part one? Um, besides the fact that they
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: look just amazing to the eye and they're so delicate
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: but also very hardy. Uh, they're symmetrical. They have bilateral symmetry,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and the science has proven that symmetry is attractive in humans. Um.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I know we've talked before about the fact that people
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: whose faces are more symmetrical or biologically more attractive than
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: than people like me which have You know, my face
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: is all over the place. One side, I know what
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the other side is doing at any time. Yeah, and yeah,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: with bilateral symmetry, it's it's like one half as mirror
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: image of the other half. And there's not that many
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: flowers in nature that that have bilateral symmetry, right, So
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty good initial theory. Yeah, And I mean,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I don't think people even realize that maybe what's going
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: on subconsciously when they look at an orchid and revel
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: in its beauty. That's one of the things you're just
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you're not even maybe noticing, you know what I'm saying.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: It's subluminal or subconscious close enough, close enough. So another
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: theory is that they look um quite vaginal in in nature.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: A lot of them do, especially some of the most
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: common ones like Pholonopsis um have this. Well, at the
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: very least, you can say George O'Keefe definitely saw it right. Yeah,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And you know clearly throughout history, the Greeks and and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you're not the first one to say that, like, they
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: have often been thought of his aphrodisiacs. And part of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that reason is from the way they look, right. And
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: actually it's just so plainly obvious that during that orchid
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: craze in Victorian England, which is also called orchid delirium
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: or kid delirium, I think it's doesn't exactly roll off
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the tongue, but they there were people who were roundly
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: opposed to that whole craze because of the overt sexuality
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: that orchid flowers broadcast. The most lurid flower. Yeah, because
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you catch like the town weirdo and like
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: your greenhouse. That's all you need to say, right, get
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: out of there now, they're no exactly he turned turned
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the pump pose on them. Oh so so so there's
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: but there's there's um, there's another whole kind of over
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: sexuality to the whole thing too. And just the name
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of orchids is I think Latin or Greek. Do you
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: remember which one? I don't remember. It's either Latin or
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Greek for um, it's Greek for testical. Yeah, orchid the word,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and it refers to the shape of the bulb, the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: orchid bulb. So people have been looking at orchids and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: thinking very impure thoughts about flowers for a very long time.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Uh So this isn't just me, this isn't just Uncle
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Josh getting weird on you. It's I'm following in a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: long tradition of and actually I'm not even doing anything myself.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I'm just recounting. I'm reporting what other people have said before. Yeah,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you just have a large collection of orchids and Georgia
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: o'kee paintings and um and a French coat. So it's
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a very normal habit for a middle aged man to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: suddenly get into. It's actually really relaxing though. It's it's
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it's it's cool just to care for him. It's well,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: like I said, they're very delicate, but they're incredibly hearty,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: which is kind of one of the cool things. And
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: they come in um like, you can't just describe an
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: orchid like this article says, that's like trying to describe
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: what's normal about any human being. There are so many
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: varieties and they all look so different, and they're all
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: manner of shapes and sizes and colors. Even though supposedly
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: not a true black or true blue, even though you
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: will see something that you will say, well that's blue
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: or black, it's really not right whatever true means, which
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: means that there's some orchid fans out there who are
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: trying to propagate true true black and true blue orchids
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, they're really like deep purple's usually variations
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of purple, which is fine. They look great. I'm not
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: not knocking it. Thanks for coming out. So the the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: um the fact that despite the fact that there are
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: so many different shape, sizes, colors, they do all sorts
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: of different stuff. They live in different places. Um. People
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: have attempted to kind of broadly classify or chids. One
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: of the first ways they do it is from their
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: growth habit and that you can divide orchids into two types.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: From their monopodial which is if you're at like one
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of those big box home stores. I'm not buzz marketing man,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it. You You're probably going to
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: find Foulonopsis because they're the easiest ones to care for,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: they're the least fussy um. They're the ones that most
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: people are familiar with, but apparently they're the least common
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: out in the wild. But they have like an upright
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: growth pattern where they have a single stem with leaves
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on either side of the stem growing opposite one another
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: UM and they shoot out a flower stem from the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: top part of the bottom pair of leaves correct uh.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And then on the other side you have the more
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: common one, which is the simpodial uh. And these are beautiful.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: These are the ones that grow horizontally uh, and they
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: send out their shoots through the old rhizome and the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: leaves and flower escapes at that point form at the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: top of the new shoots right. So one that grows
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: grows from like a horizontal rhizome to one that grows
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: upright vertically like you would think of a typical plant.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: That's that's basically the two ways that an orchid's going
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to grow as a plant. Another way that they classify
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: them too, is where they live. Because there are some
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: types of orchids that grow like what you would consider
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a normal plant out of soil. Some grow out of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: leaf litter. Those are called terrestrial orchids. Then there's the
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: kind that you typically think of grow on like trees
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: or on plants, or where a branch meets like a
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: tree round the actual trunk the bark of a tree.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Those are called epiphytes. And then lastly there's um lithophytes,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: which grow on rocks but basically do the same thing
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: that the ones that grow on trees do, which is
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: they're harvesting nutrients from the decomposing litter that accumulates in
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the grooves of the tree bark or where the elbow
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of the branch hits the tree trunk. Um, all the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: stuff that accumulates there. The roots of the orchid are
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: just sucking that stuff up. Yeah, but so it's not
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: like stealing nutrients from the thing that it grows on. Yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: they're not parasitic, And I thought it was great that
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: this article went went to the trouble of making that
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: for that point. But um, so they don't have a
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: parasitic relationship with trees. They do have a symbiotic relationship
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: with fungus, actually, so much so that they can't they
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: can't survive the first few stages of their life cycle
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: without a specific type of fungus basically acting as a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: nurse maid for the seed and the young plant as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it's growing. Yeah, Like I mean, if you have a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: lot of time and a lot of patients and a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: lot of orchid wherewithal you can try to grow these
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: from seed, but it can take a decade to get
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a flower from seed. And that's if you're really like,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that's if the thing lives. Like. Orchid seeds are so
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: tiny they're called dust seeds, and how they propagate is
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: there there need to be millions of these dispersed in
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: order to get orchids to grow at all. Right, And
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: so if it's like an epiphyte that grows it's a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: variety that grows on tree bark, this seed has to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: get carried away from the mother plant all the way
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: over to some other tree land in just the right
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: place on that tree bark, and then there has to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: be the certain type of fungus that it has the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship with that it can grow into the seed
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and feed it nutrients while the seed is developing and germinating.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: That has to happen. It doesn't happen very often, which
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: is why orchids are known for sending, like you said,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: millions and millions of seeds just out there into the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: ether and hoping that something sticks. It's like the orchids
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: way of throwing spaghetti at the wall. Yeah. Mean, it's
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: amazing that they did not go bye bye, and that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: they've been around for eighty million years, I know. And
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the things is that Michael
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Poland article is so great about this, like it's saying
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: like they have they're so maladapted in some ways that
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: they've had to get really creative in other ways, um
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and and to ensure their survival. Like for example, an orchid, Uh,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: they have pollen, right, they they're pollinating flowering plants, right,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: But when you normally think of pollen, you think of
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: you know, the yellow stuff that powdery spores that just
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you know, hit the wind and they just cover everything,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: like everything is covered in yellow plant sperm basically is
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: what it is. Right. So, but it's true. So with
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a with an orchid, they have something called pollinia, and
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: pollinia are their sacks of pollen. But they're not like
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the powdery kind. They're like about the size of a
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: little grain of wheat, and in a in an orchid flower,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: you have the reproductive column. It has the female reproductive
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: parts and the male reproductive parts all in the same place.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Right somewhere somewhere in there, there's that pollinia, and one
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: way or another, which we'll get into, that pollinia has
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to get out of that orchid through no mechanism of
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: its own, and go way, way, way far away to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: another orchid and pollinate with an orchid that is in
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: no way related to that orchid, so that you can
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: have um uh, it's just just more fitness basically for
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the offspring, right, and then that that pollinia has to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: go pollinate that reproductive column of that other one, and
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: then the seeds start to grow, and then you have
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: to broadcast the seeds and so to do this because
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: they don't have pollen that that is easily transmitted, they've
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: figured out how to trick bugs usually into pollinating for them.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: We're spreading their pollen for Yeah. So like for example,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the um some of these are amazing Ophris epiphera. You
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: take that one, the prostitute orchid m or the b
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: orchid this one is uh, all these are amazing, like
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: how they've adapted to ensure their survival is just really
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: something else. So this one copies the scent and the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: looks of female b um reproductive parts from from behind. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: like that's the cleanest way we can say it, in
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: order to attract the males. Like it looks and smells
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: like a lady be vagina. Yes, like there's a female
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: be in the flower already, and the male bees like, okay, hey,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: how's it going, I'm gonna go see how you are
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: exactly tries to um, well, I guess assault is the
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: best way to put it. The female bee, who he
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: thinks he is already in the flower, but it turns
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: out actually is the flower. And while he's like getting
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: increasingly frustrated but trying to do his thing, the pollinia
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: um detaches from the flowers reproductive column onto the bee,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and the bee flies off finally, is like forget it,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I'm out of here. It goes and finds another flower
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: eventually and is duped and does the same thing, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: when he does that, pollinia is then transferred to that
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: flower's reproductive column and pollination takes place. It is amazing
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: because not not only does it look exactly like that be,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: but it also puts out the same pheromones as that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the female of that be. That's that's pretty pretty. That's
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: natural selection at its finest. All right, here's one the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Dndrobium Sineese, not the Gary Sinese. Let's say, yeah, maybe
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: maybe Gary Cinese is uh like great great great uncle
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: was an orchid hunter maybe in China. Yeah, maybe, I
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: guess it's possible because this is a Chinese orchid and
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: this one is paul donated by hornets very specifically, and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: hornets like bees. Bees do not like hornets. So this
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: flower imitates, uh, the pheromones of bee fear. And so
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the hornets like, hey, I think there's a bee over
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: there that's scared of me. Let me go, uh, let
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: me go kill it, Let me go do whatever hornet's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: due to Beas what do they do they kill him?
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I think they sting him? Do they sting him? Or
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: to hornets bite? Now hornets sting? They sting? Uh? And
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: so it lures it over there because I think there's
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: a scared be and in fact there's nothing there but
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the orchid going, welcome, hornet, leave your junk here, right,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: and he does and already picks up the pollinium does
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the same thing to another flower. So um, and then
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: one of the things that Paullen pointed out Michael Paullen
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: pointed out was saying, pollen, which one is it? Well,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think so eminently you're thinking, so, yeah, but
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: which one is it? Do you know how to pronounce
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: his name correctly? Poland? We'll just say that just to
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: keep it from getting confusing. So what Michael Poland pointed
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: out was that, um, if you look at the types
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of orchids like the orfice epiph era, if you look
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: at like the same orchids from the same variety, does
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: they'll they're slightly different. So it's clearly it looks like
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the bee from behind and the pheromones that they're putting
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: out are the same as well, but they're slightly different.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: And they're just different enough so that bees don't learn
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: to just avoid those flowers because they're being tricked every time.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: So they it's it's just just different enough so that
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the bees can't learn that. I think just think that's fascinating. Well, here,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: did you read that Darwin article I sent you? Uh?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Did you send meyone? I didn't get it. Maybe I
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: didn't send this one. Sorry, yeah, you didn't send it.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: It's okay, tell me about it. It's called moth Tongu's
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: orchids and Darwin they're predicted power of evolution and basically
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: back in the day eighteen sixty two, a British orchid
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: grower sent Darwin Um some orchids from Madagascar and said,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: look at these things. Aren't they amazing? They have a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: nectary which is like a foot long, and Darwin's like,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: he writes back, he wrote to a friended q Q
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Garden's kW which is wonderful, wonderful public garden in London,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: which I went to with Emily and Um, and that
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: they had a quite an orchid collection there, of course
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: because they raided the world for years. Uh and he said,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: he he wrote and said in Madagascar there must be
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: moths with the proboscis capable of extension to a length
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: between ten and eleven inches, because like that's the only
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: explanation here. Well yeah, and he was defending his new
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: theory of natural selection well and co evolution specifically, so
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: he positive these things are co evolving. And not only that,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: he literally predicted had this new species that he that
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: no one had ever seen before. As it turns out,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: there is a moth. In nineteen o seven, twenty years
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: after Darwin died, the subspecies of the gigantic congo moth
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: from Madagascar uh was identified that had this long proboscis
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: like twelve inches long. And they were like, hey, this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: has got to be the thing. Like, I think Darwin
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: was right. But it wasn't until about a hundred years
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: later that they finally literally observed on camera this moth
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: feeding the flower. And Darwin was like, from his grave,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: told you so. Yeah, he said, boo yah, how about that,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: like a hundred and thirty years after he first suggested
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: this was all all proved out. That is pretty cool.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: It's awesome that Darwin. He was a heck of a guy.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: He's kind of smart, you know, he was a little smart.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I've got one more and this is just so Remember
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: we said there's twenty five thousand species. Yeah, we're not
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: gonna go through them. No, I want to go go
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: over one more though, called um Bulba phyl Um bakari
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and it it's um pollination is aided by flies and
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: carrying beetles, and what attracts carrying beetles and flies, well,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: rotting flesh because it's where flies feed and that's where
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: they lay their eggs that turn into maggots. Right, So
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the flower puts out the smell of rotting meat to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: attract the specific type of of pollinator so that it
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: can it can be pollinated. Let's I'm just insane. All right,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you want to take another break? Yeah, all right, we're
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: gonna take another break and come back and talk a
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: little bit about the fact that vanilla is an orchid
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and other amazing facts. Alright, So vanilla is an orchid.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Moving on, that was an amazing fact. It is an
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: amazing fact. Like, who knew. I mean a lot of people,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: but I didn't know. The flavoring is um, it's the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: it's the seeds, Yeah, it's it's the vanilla bean. Obviously,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: it's not like they grind up those sweet petals of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the flower. Yeah, but it's not even the outside of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the bean. It's the little tiny seeds inside. That's where
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the vanilla flavor comes from. Yeah, there's this fascinating anecdote.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the gist of it, but it's in
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that that book, the Derito effect that I talked about before,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: where they he was talking about the the origin of vanilla,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: imitation vanilla and how they just changed the world. Basically,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: apparently the vanilla market was crashing and somebody came in
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: at just the right time propped it up. Yeah, propped
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: it up with the imitation vanilla. But go again, go
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: check that book out. It's amazing. Well, are you talking
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: to me or everyone else? Uh? So let's talk about
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: some Let's talk about how to care for an orchid.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Just in case anybody said, you know what, I'm gonna
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: go to my local big box retailer. Even better, I'm
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: gonna go to my local, locally owned mom and pop
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: nursery and buy an orchid today, my local orchiddery. Yeah,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: this is what you want to look for, Okay. Um, Well,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: first of all, when you when you look at the
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: orchid itself, it might give you a few clues as
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to what it needs care wise, um, right off the bat,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: like and and these are broad um. I mean, if
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: you're an expert, obviously you know a lot about it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: But these are just some kind of broad things to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: look for. If if it doesn't have many leaves, or
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: if the leaves are kind of leathery, um, then it
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: probably needs more light than maybe another variety. Yes, and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: if the leaves are limp and soft, uh, it probably
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: maybe is a little light sensitive. And maybe you don't
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: throw it on your sun deck. Yeah. And and you
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: should probably ask the person you're buying the orchid from.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, do all that you know, don't us and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: expect to walk away with complete knowledge. Yeah. So again
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: you're probably going to find if you look in the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: potting medium. There are terrestrial orchids, but I've never seen
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: one in real life. I've only read about him on
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the internet. You know, have you ever seen an orchid
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: in soil and dirt? Uh? Just I've just read about
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: it in legend right, same here, same here. I've always
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: seen him in like sphagnum moss or something like that.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: You can also find it in like coconut husk, fiber
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: just all. Apparently styrofoam beads work just fine. Because the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: point is the orchid isn't getting any of its nutrients,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: or getting very very little of its new nutrients from
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the growing medium. It's that which is why you need
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to fertilize it, like basically weakly, because that's where it's
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: going to get it's um it's nutrients from So the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: growing medium matters in that what you're what you're doing
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: is providing a lot of aeration for the roots of
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the the um orchid, which don't they since they don't
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: grow underground, they're exposed to air and light and all
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: that stuff, which is totally fine, But that means you
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: don't want to cover them up too much with the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: growing medium. You want to let them run free. Um
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and and so that's the purpose of the growing medium itself. Yeah,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: you don't want to grow an orchid in a rubber
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: bladder full of red clay. That's a that's dead. That's
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a dead orchid. Uh. Those fleshy roots that you see there,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: they have these white cells that they're covered with called velamen,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and they're just sponges that absorb all the nutrients and
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: all the water. Uh. And it's also a coding that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: helps protect moisture loss from heat, even though they generally
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: like light and they like warm environments. You just it's
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you know, they are sort of delicate. You don't wanna
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you don't want to bake them in the hot Georgia
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: sun all day. Now. Very there are very few orchids,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and you're probably going to be like an orchid enthusiast.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: By the time you really come across an orchid that
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: likes lots of intense sun, most of them, for the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: most part, are they like sun, but it's gonna best
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: be indirect, like maybe in a window that gets a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: little bit of sun. Um. And then the high humidity
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: I think is is not across the board, because there's
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: orchids that live like in mountainous areas where you know,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: it's kind of rocky and desert and arid um. But
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: the most of the orchids you find, like you're gonna
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: find at the store in the United States or you know,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: the UK, they're they're probably tropical. So they want high
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: humidity on the order of like and they want temperatures
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: daytime temperatures of at least eighty degrees fair high God
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: knows what that is in celsius. And then they want
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: like twelve to fourteen hours of daylight. Chance of brain yeah. Uh,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: like I mentioned, they do, they need to be water
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: but like you said, they really like. The way to
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: kill an orchid is to overwater it or to not
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: have your drainage. Right. Um, a water logged orchid is
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: no good. No, apparently they can tolerate drought better than overwater,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: much better. So um, again you want to water weekly.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: You want to wait until the growing medium dries out
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: again and then water it. And since you're fertilizing it,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you you it's damaging to put fertilizer onto dry orchid
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: roots apparently, right, so, which is why you only want
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: to use liquid fertilizer with orchids, but you also want
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: to pre water it. You want the orchids to to
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: be already wet when you use the fertilizer. The next day,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: dilute that liquid fertilizer two right, Yeah. The the rule
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: of thumb that I was told was you wanna um
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: fertilize weekly weekly, so w e a k yt Yeah, okay,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I don't even need to finish it. So um, I
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: use a orchid fertilizer which smells so bad. It smells
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: like it smells like concentrated like rodent p and it
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: kind of looks like a to actually like dried out
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: concentrated rodent p um. It could be, but apparently that's
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: what orchids like. Because it's keep in mind going, but
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: you it says to use like a teaspoon for a
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: gallon of water. So I use like three quarters of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a teaspoon for a gallon of water, and it seems
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: to work pretty well. And use that gallon for all
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: your orchids or you just keep that stored. Uh no, no,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I will. So I'll water them until like they're nice
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the growing mediums nice and wet, and then I'll come
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the next day and they'll just kind of like give it,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple of the couple of turns a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: couple of glugs on each orchid just to get it
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: around there. I don't soak them with it, so it
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: depends on, you know, how heavy handed I am from
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: week to week, and they don't seem to mind one
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: way or another. Sometimes I'll use the whole gallon, but
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: most of the time it's like half to two thirds
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of the gallon I'll use to fertilize it. Do you
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: talk to them, I don't think so not. I'm not
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: conscious of it if I do, but that's I might.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Who knows, I'm pretty pretty insane. It's possible I talked
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to him and don't realize that, you know what I mean,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Not like I'm I'm talking to them and they're talking back,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: but it's entirely possible. I say things to them and
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not aware. Okay, but you you don't, like you
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: haven't named them and make an effort to speak to them.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: O my crackpot. Come on, I don't know. I don't
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: mind that. You want to hear something weirder than that, though,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: some ridiculously high percentage of dog owners don't talk to
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: their dogs. What do you mean, like something like I
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: want to say I will have to look it up.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: But some more than half of dog owners don't talk
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: to their dogs, Like they don't give them orders or
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: they don't say your tweet bath. So they might give
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: them orders like sit or come on, let's go or
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: something like that, but they're they're not also like all right,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: we're almost there, are um? Yeah, they're just not like
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: not not whatever is in between those two things. They're
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: not doing that. They're not talking to their dog. I
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: just find that bizarre. I mean, I'm yelling at my
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: dogs half the time. Are in the other half of them?
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm talking to a stupid boys. You don't
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: yell at your dogs. You yell at your dogs. Yeah,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, of course, what do you say.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: You yell like I love you so much? No, I
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: yelled Nico get off of me. Good God, stop it. Okay,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty cute. Yeah, I mean it's not cute.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Like what do you do? Wh dog is in your face,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: like chewing your hair and like scraping, scratching your chest
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And are you threatened him with the baby gun? Yeah,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: that's like the puppy bounder. No. I never hit my dogs,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: but man, I yelled them all the time. They're all like,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Nico is just so needy. Is that your shelty? No, no, no, no,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Charlie's great. She never needs to get yelled at. Nico's
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: just needy, and like, uh, like jumps on people and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you know there's no way a dog can jump on someone.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And you're like, would you please get off of that person?
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you go get down. Yeah,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I got you. I see what you're saying that that
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, not yelling like I hate you because
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I'm upset in my own life, right right, Yeah, that's
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: what I was after, Like, I hate my job. It's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: all your fault. Um, Hey, did I tell you that
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: we did a DNA test? On little Momo and she's
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: like ten percent shelty, Oh really yeah, And we were like,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: well that explains her hurting us towards the door. Like
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: if if one of us is getting ready to go out,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: she'll go and get the other one just kind of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: like push push him toward the door. Is she also, um,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: just very aware of where everyone is at all times,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: like checks on everything. Yeah, Like if I go to
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: bed first, you mean, Momo will go to bed with me.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: And then like if if if Momo decides that you
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: me stayed up long enough, she'll come out in the
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: doorway and kind of look at her like all right,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: it's time to go to bed, She'll come and get you. Yeah.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: And does she sit in the window and bark at
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: everything if if she had a window to bark out of, yes,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: but we live in a windowless box, right, So that's
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Charlie's main job. Is she just sits on the sun
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: room sofa looking out the window as if it is
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: her post. Yeah, and she'll bark at yeah this this
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Charlie Barkett birds no, just like people and other dogs.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, and literally like it's her job. You can
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: tell she's not a jerk. She's just like, I'm on
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: duty is what we call it, you know, understood, Yeah,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it's tell her to clock out, clock out, Charlie. Does
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: she listen, come to bed? Have you tried yelling at
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: at her? No, she's she doesn't need yelling, like A said,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: said clock out Charlie. Um, all right, So back to orchids.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Potting and repotting orchids generally, unless you have to repot
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: an orchid, don't repot an orchid just because you're like, yeah,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of sick of that pot. Let me put
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: it in a new one, right, because they say, oh, yeah,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not very happy with that. I'm not going to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to send up another flower for at
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: least a year. Yeah, they don't like getting repotted. Um,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: but if you have to report, uh, I mean, what's
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: your advice. I'm actually I've not had that much trouble reporting. Um. Yeah,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: like I guess, I guess they don't immediately that Actually,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: to tell you the truth, now that you asked me,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that that explains why some of them haven't flowered for
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: so long, because I have repotted them here there, but
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I was over watering them and it was kind of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: vital that I did repot them because their roots were decaying.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: So if you have an orchid that you realize you've overwatered.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And this is when I learned not to use sphagnum
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: moss any longer because it really holds in water. And
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: that's the great thing about the pine bark is that
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: it just lets the water go right through it hangs
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: onto some of it. But you're the point is to
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: just water and orchid as frequently as it needs it,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: rather than watering it and letting the soil hold the
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: water and for it right. So the sphagnum moss was
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: holding that that water in and the roots were rotting,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: so I had to repot it. I had to trim
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: off some of the old roots, and then I learned
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: this trick somewhere on the internet. But I dusted the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: roots that were rotted with cinnamon, and I think cinnamon
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: might be an anti microbial or something like that. But brother,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: my orchid loved me for that, Thank you so much.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Started growing almost immediately, even though I just repotted it
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and cut off a significant number of its roots. Yeah,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: so it's vital to repotted sometimes. But yeah, like you said,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: you don't want to just be like, I think I'll
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: switch it to this pot for this month because I
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: like yellow in the spring. Yeah exactly, Yeah, Um, what
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: else you got anything else? No? I think you said
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: that growing it from seed is next to impossible, so
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: it's just go buy one. Yeah, i'd like to hear
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: from h I'm sure there's some horticulturists who have done that.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I'd like to hear about that experience. Yeah, I'd like
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to hear all the things I got wrong. You're like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: chuck me out at your dog, right, and we would also.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: I think we kind of touched on it at the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: very beginning. But I've got to give a shout out
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: to the article The Orchid Thief and the movie that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: was based on adaptation. Yeah, I don't think we can
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: uh like in our in our stupid article. It's a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: orchids in pop culture, the movie While or Kid with
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Mickey Rourke and gry Oates like, are you kidding me? Like?
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: There was an entire movie written about orchid hunting and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: the super rare ghost orchid that John Laroche hunts in
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the wild swamps of Florida by the great writer Susan Orlean,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: and it was not even mentioned. No, you know, I
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: got a story about that. My friend Stacy works. It's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: a costumer in the film industry, and she worked on adaptation.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And about a year before she started work, I was
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: just into reading any and all scripts I could read
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: at the time. And she said, I got a new script.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: It's called The Orchid Thief by some uh dude named
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Charlie Kaufman. It's like, all right, And I read it
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in a night. I couldn't put it down, and I
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: called her up the next day. I was like, I've
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: never read anything like this in my life. There hadn't
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: been anything like that, Like this is unlike any movie
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I've ever heard of. And I have no idea what
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I just read. I know. And then they changed the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: name from worka deep to adaptation and it's one of
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: my favorites. It's great. Charlie Kaufman needs to get back
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: to work now he's working. What's he doing now? Did
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: you see? Uh? And I'm a Lisa, Yeah, that was
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: like three years ago. That's what I'm saying, get to work, Kaufman.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sure he's working on something. I hope so, uh yeah,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I love the adaptation. Chris Cooper that performs is one
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: of my favorite acting roles of all time. Yeah, they
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: couldn't have couldn't have cast it better than that. God,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: he was great. Yeah, well that's uh, that's adaptation, as
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: was Nick Cage. I don't want to short change him. No,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and of course Meryl Streep, I mean, does it even
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: need to be said? Yeah, but Nick Cage can he
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: gets a lot of crap. But well he oh sure
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah, the wicker Man remake. That was not the
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: least of him. If you go on to Netflix, he's
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: on like every third third movie on Netflix. Yeah, he's
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: making bank. Brother, I don't know if you can maybe
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: he's definitely keeping his head above water. Well he's spindy,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: so how is that what it is? Yeah? Apparently he
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: is quite a reputation for buying ridiculous things. M hm,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: that cost a lot of dough. Well you got anything else?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And now I've got nothing else? All right? Well, uh,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: welcome Slash. I'm sorry to all of the new people
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: who have never heard this podcast before but are into
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: orchids and thought they'd give it a try. Uh And
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about orchids, you can
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: type that word in the search part how stuff works
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: dot Com. Since I said that it's time for a
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: listener mail speaking of all the things you just said
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and listener mail. Did you see that one from the guy?
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: He said that we were just dilettants and kind of
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: laid into us. Yeah, you go just dilettants and all
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you do is just talked like forty minutes about an
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: overview about things right and email them back. It's like,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: you got it, buddy, Yeah, that's exactly what we are.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: His complaint was that each episode is about a different topic. Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I was like, and then we just give the broadest
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: of overviews over forty five minutes. I was like, that
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: is our show to a t. Yeah, you should write
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: our buyook. Keep looking, buddy, I wish him. Well, that
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was nice of you. That's that's world class, Chuck. All right,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this flight attendant response. Surprisingly, the bet
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: show kind of blew up. We got a lot of
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: responses from airline workers and flight attendants and passengers, and
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: most of them were angry either. I think we did
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: good on that one. So here we go, flight attendant here,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: thank you for the awesome podcast. It was really on point.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I was impressed the amount of research and how much
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: you got it right. You both asked for someone to
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: weigh on whether we're paid for delays the cabin door closed.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: The answer is yes. We can even be paid a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: percentage for delays with the cabin door open, but it
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: has to be over a certain amount of time with
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: customers on board, and we have to file the request ourselves.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Most people don't because it's not much money and not
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: worth it. Secondly, there was and this is with uh
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: this per Sin's airline right, So I don't know if
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: that's true across the board. Is it a major airline? Well,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: just let me finish. Secondly, there was some debate over
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: whether we needed to score an eighty or ninety and training. Actually,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you're both right. We have to score at least an
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: eighty on the first take. If we fail, we have
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to score ninety on the retake. Thank you for doing
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: an episode on our profession. The things could be better.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: We love our jobs and have a great time. But
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: see you all on a flight sometime soon. And Chuck,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the whiskey will be on me. Sorry, Josh, no peanuts.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: That is from Daniel, flight attendant, major airline. Everything's always
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: coming up, Chuck, I bet you can get your whiskey too,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: my friend, that'd be great. Well, thanks a lot, Daniel.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I'll be sure to go check the email out and
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: figure out what an email or what airline you work for,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and then start flying it and hope we crossed paths.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I can get some free whiskey too. If you want
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to offer us free whiskey, we are all ears. You
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and there's also an official s Y s K podcast page.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: I also have a website, by the way, Are you
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: serious Clark dot com. You can find Chuck on Facebook
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at the official stuff
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: you Should Know Facebook page. You can send all of us,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: including Jerry, an email to stuff Podcasts at how stuff
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: that how Stuff Works dot com