Sunday Afternoon in the Bronx

In a Hothouse with Orchids

Sunday afternoon in the Bronx usually means a home game at Yankee Stadium. But yesterday, the Yankees were still in Tampa for Spring Training–although technically, Spring remains a few long, long weeks away.

Anyway, at Audrey’s urging, we drove to the Bronx to photograph orchids and eat cannolis (tube-shaped shells of fried pastry with ricotta cheese filling) with expresso on Arthur Avenue.

There are only a couple varieties of cannoli (mainly cannolis dipped in chocolate and cannolis not dipped in chocolate), but more than 30,000 species of orchids–and it seemed as if I saw at least 29,000 of them at the New York Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Still, even if you could care less about orchids, there are good reasons to catch the Botanical Garden’s “Orchid Show” which is open through April 12th.

One of those reasons is the Conservatory itself, which the Botanical Garden modestly describes as “among the grandest indoor spaces in the world.” Well, probably not, but still very cool. As was Enid, who Audrey and met at a party about 20 years ago. The A., by the way, stands for Annenberg–she was Walter’s sister–and even in her late 80s she had a razor-sharp mind and a show-stopping sense of style.

Enid’s philanthropic activities were legion. In Washington, DC, alone, she contributed the Haupt Fountains between the White House and the Washington Monument along with the four-acre Enid A. Haupt Garden alongside the Smithsonian Institution. She also purchased the 27-acre River Farm near Mount Vernon that once belonged to George Washington and donated it to the American Horticultural Society, rather than see it acquired by the Soviet Embassy as a summer dacha.

As for the Conservatory in the Bronx, a portion of the $34 million she donated to the New York Botanical Garden over the years literally saved it from the wrecking ball. Today, it is the largest Victorian glasshouse in the United States which The New York Times describes as “a stunning series of Victorian glass pavilions that recall London's former Crystal Palace, [which] shelters a rich collection of tropical, subtropical, and desert plants as well as seasonal flower shows.” That sounds about right.

The current “Orchid Show” is one of those seasonal events. And the thing about orchids is that even if you aren’t exactly keen on flowers of any kind, the sheer variety of shape, form and color of the 30,000 orchid species makes for a fascinating photographic project.

I tried to include common names with the following orchid portraits. But not all the orchids were labeled–perhaps because some larcenous gardener pinched the descriptive plaques or, more likely, the specie is so well known that the staff reckoned only a complete moron wouldn’t know what it’s called.