By Lauren Wanko
Correspondent
Tens of thousands of orchids fill 15,000 square feet of greenhouses at Silva Orchids in Neptune.
“Orchids are the largest plant family. There are 32,000 different orchids and there are more orchids being discovered all the time,” said co-owner Joe Silva.
“An orchid consists of two petals, three sepals and a lip. There are other orchids you would look at and say, well that doesn’t have three sepals but they’re actually modified sometimes together into one part but genetically they’re still an orchid,” said co-owner Tony Silva.
Joe says after World War II, orchid nurseries, which sold mostly cattleya orchids as cut flowers often used for corsages, became incredibly popular.
“And an interesting thing, New Jersey was the number one orchid producing state in the nation because of close proximity to New York, land being cheaper, more abundant,” Joe said.
Eventually that changed, he said.
“Nobody wanted to put a corsage on that became after a while your mother or your grandmother’s flower and with that ’60s revolution, who wanted to have your mother or grandfather’s style?” Joe asked.
The Silva brothers grow and sell potted orchids. It starts with a seedpod. The stem of the flower becomes a seedpod. Inside there can be about a million seeds, say the Silvas.
“Once you make the seedpod, then you send that seedpod to a laboratory. The laboratory will then transfer them into flasks or bottles with a liquid nutrient and eventually maybe six, nine months, a year later you get those bottles back,” Joe said.
The new babies are planted in pots. Depending on the variety, it typically takes two and a half to seven years before the orchid blooms.
“They’re the top of the evolutionary chain as far as flowering plants. The pollination of the orchid is different from most pollination of plants. It’s done by specific pollinators either a bee or bird or particular insect so they attract one species of one bird or whatever insect to each flower and then the chances of them cross pollinating by going to another flower of exactly the same type is higher,” Tony said.
The Silva brothers have been cross-breeding orchids for years. Although corsages may not be as popular as they once were, they say demand for their potted plants continues to grow.