5# – What is the history of the Garden's orchid collection?

Voice: Andrew Colligan, archivist and historian Resources: Public Relations fact sheet, Bulletin articles, Kemper Center handout I’m Andrew Colligan, the Garden’s archivist and historian. The Missouri Botanical Garden has collected, grown and displayed orchids for more than a century. The first specimens were given as a gift to the Garden’s founder, Henry Shaw, in 1876. Mr. Shaw was especially fond of orchids. At his death in 1889, the Garden’s collection, though small at the time, was one of the country’s most complete. The collection grew steadily, and in 1918, the largest public display of orchids ever held in St. Louis made it’s debuted at a Christmas Show. In 1923, George Pring, an orchidologist on the Garden staff, spent six months collecting plants in Panama and Colombia. He returned with eight tons of orchids, including 5,000 Cattleyas. The Garden held its first orchid show the following year, in 1924. Eight-thousand visitors came! In 1926, the Garden set up a tropical field station in Panama and continued to collect orchids there. Meanwhile, back in St. Louis, industrial smoke and pollution threatened the orchids…so, they were moved 30 miles west to Gray Summit, to what is now the Shaw Nature Reserve, where special greenhouses were built for them. An orchid seedling department was started in 1927 and the collection continued to grow in size and prominence. By 1958, air quality in the city had improved and the orchids were returned to the Garden. They have remained here ever since.

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5# – What is the history of the Garden's orchid collection? is an episode from Missouri Botanical Garden Orchid Show 2007 by Missouri Botanical Garden.

This episode is 1:13 long.

This episode was published on Jan 1, 2006.

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