Posted:
1/27/2025 |
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(St. Louis) - The Missouri Botanical Garden is giving visitors the rare chance to view its extensive orchid collection, while highlighting how Shaw Nature Reserve saved this beloved collection a century ago.
Every year, the Garden transforms the Emerson Conservatory into a breathtaking display of tropical orchids from around the globe. The annual Orchid Show is the only time this collection is on public display throughout the year. The show is open during daytime admission February 1–March 9.
Additionally, guests 21+ can experience the Garden's Orchid Show transformed after dark with dramatic lighting, live music, and samples from local breweries, wineries, and distilleries. Representatives of the Garden’s Peter H. Raven Library and the Herbarium will be at the event to talk more in-depth about the orchid collection. Orchid Nights run 6–8 p.m. on February 6 and February 20.
The show features hundreds of flowering orchids from a vast collection of over 5,000 individual plants and 700 unique species, which nearly one in ten are threatened or endangered. Guests who visit the show more than once may get the special treat of seeing new species on display as the Garden adds new orchids as they bloom.
This year’s Orchid Show will have a focus on how Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit saved this beloved, but fragile collection in the 1920s to celebrate the centennial of the Nature Reserve.
As St. Louis experienced rapid industrialization in the early 20th century, a cloud of smog settled over the area. This pollution was so intense that the Garden’s living collections began dying, including the tropical orchids.
In 1925, the Garden made the decision to purchase property in Gray Summit with a plan to move the entire living collections out of the city. The Garden’s orchids were amongst the first to make the journey to what is now known as Shaw Nature Reserve.
While the Garden was able to eventually move the orchids back to St. Louis, the 2400 acres of the Nature Reserve continue to provide a safe haven for native plants, including native Missouri orchids, and a leading voice in ecological restoration for the past century.
The Garden will be celebrating Shaw Nature Reserve’s centennial year throughout 2025.