Knoxify

My friend, Melissa, told me her grand­mother advised her always to have orchids in her house, espe­cially in win­ter, because they bring a cold room to life. So, Melissa’s lovely home teemed with live orchids of every vari­ety: pha­laenop­sis, cat­t­leyas, paphio­pe­dilums, den­dro­bi­ums and oncid­i­ums. Her favorite orchid was called “Lady’s Slip­per” and is actu­ally native to this region. The Chero­kee used it to treat var­i­ous ner­vous disorders. Lady’s Slip­per is sunny yel­low with pur­ple veins, fra­grant and fragile-looking. Melissa was frag­ile too, dying sud­denly and leav­ing two young chil­dren behind. She was my child­hood friend, redis­cov­ered as an adult, when we were both young moth­ers with tow-headed toddlers.

Melissa moved to Florida for a few years when her hus­band was in the Navy, but she always dreamed of com­ing home to Knoxville to raise her fam­ily. After her first bout of can­cer, she was more deter­mined than ever to move back, close to her par­ents and the friends with whom she’d grown up. Melissa and her hus­band ended up buy­ing a house within walk­ing dis­tance of her child­hood home, where her par­ents still live today. That sense of place, prac­ti­cally a genetic trait in all South­ern­ers, called Melissa home.

We became neigh­bors and best friends. Our chil­dren were devoted play­mates. We’d hang out at Whit­low Park in Sequoyah and watch our fear­less lit­tle ones climb to pre­car­i­ous perches in the pine trees or swing them­selves higher and higher on the swing set till they were air­borne, land­ing in the gravel and laugh­ing. We trick-or-treated together, had birth­day par­ties at each other’s houses and shared chicken pox, so our kids would all get it over with at the same time. And, always there were orchids in Melissa’s immac­u­late, invit­ing house. Our chil­dren knew not to touch them or even breathe on them!

Cross­roads, seem to come and go, yeah.
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Know­ing many, lov­ing none,
Bear­ing sor­row havin fun,

So go the lyrics to the All­man Broth­ers song, “Melissa.”

It’s been ten years since Melissa died, but I think of her often, espe­cially when I make the trip out to Lady Slip­per Lane, off Watt Road in deep West Knoxville to Elmore Orchids. Melissa intro­duced me to this green­house that serves as a spa for orchids, a place for them to rest and recu­per­ate from the hard work of being beau­ti­ful. Elmore’s board­ing pro­gram is a won­der­fully prac­ti­cal idea, typ­i­cally East Ten­nessean in con­cept: don’t toss out those orchids after they bloom. Recy­cle them at Elmore’s, and you’ll never have to buy new orchids again! Of course, Elmore Orchids sells new orchids too. The family-owned busi­ness sup­plies local retail­ers and has a thriv­ing walk-in busi­ness. Jim Elmore is adept at cul­ti­vat­ing hybrid species of orchids as well as rare vari­eties of ferns.

Paul Fortsch, a Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee hor­ti­cul­ture grad­u­ate with exten­sive expe­ri­ence at Selby Gar­dens in Sara­sota, Florida and an intern­ship with Lines Orchids on Sig­nal Moun­tain, man­ages the green­house. Fortsch knows all his cus­tomers on sight, even if we’re only in every few months. He’s the one who calls us when our “babies” are back in bloom. Some peo­ple like to pick up their plants when they’re just begin­ning to bud. I like my orchids to get as much TLC as pos­si­ble before I bring them home, prefer­ably with a bloom or two and no “dud buds” in sight.

It’s inter­est­ing that Fortsch stud­ied orchids in South Florida, since Susan Orlean’s mes­mer­iz­ing book, The Orchid Thief, is set in South Florida’s Faka­hatchee Strand and involves the Semi­nole Indi­ans’ mys­ti­cal con­nec­tion to a rare species called the “Ghost Orchid,” from which they extract a mood-altering sub­stance. The Acad­emy Award win­ning movie, Adap­ta­tion, is based on this deli­ciously quirky and com­pelling story. I asked Fortsch about the infa­mous Ghost Orchid.  He debunked the myth but said there are psy­che­delic orchids called cebo­letta which are used by the same indige­nous tribes that use the pey­ote cac­tus for rit­u­al­is­tic purposes.

Dur­ing Fortsch’s time in the Florida ever­glades, he inven­to­ried epi­phytes or “air plants” in Sara­sota County and slogged through the very same swamps fea­tured in the book and the movie. “It was the most dan­ger­ous place I’ve ever been in my life,” he recalled. “The cot­ton­mouths are worse than the alli­ga­tors, unless they’re mat­ing or have a brood. It’s all about tim­ing with alligators.”

Although the ghost orchid is not psy­chotropic, it is an event in the orchid world when one blooms in cul­ti­va­tion, as it’s doing right now at Elmore’s. “It’s the only ghost orchid that’s bloomed for us this year,” said Fortsch.

As for me, I’m con­tent with the domes­ti­cated pha­laenop­sis or “big-leaf orchid.” Phals are the hardi­est house orchids and bloom the longest. The shape of the blos­soms reminds me of our Ten­nessee state flower, iris ger­man­ica, a kiss­ing cousin to the orchid. I put them in bas­kets and cachep­ots around my house, tie their droop­ing stems to stakes with raf­fia and spray their waxy leaves with Leaf Shine. Voila – instant room makeover! Who notices dust or scuffed base­boards when there’s a show-stopping pha­laenop­sis ama­bilis in the room? At least, that’s what my friend, Melissa, always said …

No one hears his lonely sigh,
There are no blan­kets where he lies.
In all his deep­est dreams the gypsy flies
With sweet Melissa … mmm …

Her hus­band remar­ried. Her kids changed schools. Our boys, born just four months apart, are no longer insep­a­ra­ble. I got divorced and moved out of the neigh­bor­hood where Melissa and I both grew up. But some­how, the orchids con­nect us and sus­tain our friendship.