FUN FILED FIELD TRIP TO SELBY GARDENS

Saturday morning arrived with clear bright blue skies, a perfect day for a field trip.  Eighteen ROS members made their way from all points in the County to meet up in Sarasota for a private, guided, behind the scenes tour of Selby Gardens.   What followed was truly amazing.  We started out with a quick tour of the Conservatory, where all of the blooming orchids are displayed, then onto the real reason for the trip, the behind the scenes growing areas.  What we found were three greenhouses filled to the rafters with species orchids, a cool house, an intermediate house and finally a hot house.  I was in orchid heaven.  Species that I had only ever read about stood and hung before me in full specimen glory.  Encyclias with psuedobulbs the size of Bermuda onions, table after table of cool growing miniatures from the montane forests of South America much too cool growing to even think of growing in Central Florida.  Plant envy was raging, lust was in my eyes.  Linda Lawrence obviously noticed, she keep telling me to empty my pockets.  I think our guide was getting a little worried.  The Gardens hasn't given a behind the scenes tour in the past several years because of theft problems.  We are very lucky that they broke their own rule for us.   From the greenhouses we were escorted across the street to the fairly new science and research buildings where we met up with Stig Dalstrom who talked with us about the process of identifying new species, showed us examples of the dried herbarium specimens sent in from the field and then finally took us to the lab where he and his staff are in the process, in conjunction with Fish and Wildlife, of flasking and eventually re-establishing native Florida species back into the Everglades.  After the tour we retired to one of the many open green spaces in the gardens for a brown bag/picnic lunch.  After lunch we headed off once again, this to do some plant shopping at Orchid Mania in Myakka City.  No one left empty handed.  What follows is a pictorial of the trip.  Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed them in real life.  This just might inspire you to make sure to join us on our next field trip adventure.  To view a larger picture just click on the individual picture, to return to the main page click on your back button.