My association with orchids began soon after my wife, Pat, and I were married. I was almost half way through what wound up being a 20 yr. career in the U. S. Navy Submarine Service. The sub I was stationed on had two complete crews, and an unusually dependable operating schedule which meant one crew would travel to a specified port to meet the sub when it returned from the at sea portion of its schedule. We would do a complete turnover and the on coming crew would take control of the boat for about 3 months, while the off going crew returned home for a rather light schedule of rest and relaxation and two months of a heavier schedule of school and study. At the end of that three month period the two crews would swap jobs and repeat the process.

At the first opportunity, I planned a trip to Florida to introduce my new wife to a favorite Aunt and Uncle who had not been able to attend the wedding. It was this visit that introduced me to orchids for the first time. My aunt had a number of strange looking plants in pots hanging on a large Oak tree in her yard. Orchids, she called them, and we had several conversations about them. On departure, I was presented with one of her plants, and the adventure began.

During my next “at sea” cycle on the boat, our orchid bloomed, but of course I knew nothing about that until I returned home, but by then the bloom was long gone, and I only had a few photos that Pat had taken as proof of the event.

During these early months I was reading everything I could get my hands on about orchids, and had learned that there were orchids that grew in South Carolina. That was interesting, because I had grown up in SC, and I had never heard of orchids before our trip to Florida. My literature did say that most of the orchids in SC were terrestrial, meaning they grew in the soil like most other plants, and were very difficult to transplant. There was one, though that was an epiphyte, or an “air plant” like the orchid I had, and they grew in the river swamps in the southern part of SC, and were usually found growing in association with Resurrection Fern. I had spent a great deal of my life in these river swamps, and was very familiar with Resurrection Fern, but had never heard of orchids growing there, and certainly not Epidendrum conopseum, as it was called at the time.

The search was on. During my in port periods I did quite a bit of fishing, some with my new in-laws, and some with my new wife, and one day we found it!

Jump into the future about 10 years, I’m retired from the Navy and working at my new job with a large orchid nursery in SC, and a member of the SC Orchid Society. Native orchids would occasionally come up, and the fact that I had seen Epidendrum conopseum growing in the wild always created interest.

My employer had a block of seedlings that had conopseum as one parent, and when I left that job, I purchased one of these plants, and still have three pots of it. (one in full bloom as I write). I always had questions about whether or not conopseum would breed cold hardiness into any of its seedlings, or in general just what traits it might impart to its offspring.

I never got a chance to do any of this discovery, but have not lost the curiosity, Thus this request for assistance. My one copy of Sander’s List of Orchid Hybrids (1961-70 addendum) lists 13 crosses with conopseum as a parent, and I would be interested in obtaining divisions of any of these plants that I can find.

Point of interest, at some point after 1970 The taxonomists re-discovered conopseum and decided it was not first published under that name, instead was first published as Epi. magnoliae, so any crosses with magnoliae would also be desirable. The one cross that I have is (BL richard mueller ‘Newberry’HCC/AOS X Epi. conopseum.

If anyone has information that might assist a curious old man in this search, please contact me either through this forum, or email at ehney(at)yahoo.com. Thanks for any assistance.

Looking for "wild orchids" in the swamps of South Carolina

The search is over. Success!

Photo of my only Epi. conopseum cross. The Epi. conopseum parent is now more properly

known as Epi. magnoliae. The other parent of this cross is BL Richard Mueller