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by Adam Fulford, InsatiableGardener.com

A Delightful Addition to Indoor Gardens

Native to tropical regions all over the Americas and the Caribbean, Oncidium orchids are also known as “Dancing Girls”, renowned for their bright and showy yellow flowers with ruffled edges that look like a troop of ballerinas in frilly yellow dresses. Some varieties may exhibit orange, red, pink, white, or blue flowers. Dancing Girls are known to feed pollen to hummingbirds.

Renowned Swedish botanist Olof Swartz, widely considered to be the world’s first orchid specialist, became enthralled with the Dancing Girls of the American tropics when he first beheld them in jungles of the Americas in 1783, and named them Oncidiums.

Also Known As…

Oncidiums are also known as “Dancing Dolls” for their distinctive appearance, but also referred to as “Spray Orchids” by some orchid aficionados due to a capability they possess to store water.  Oncidiums are also sometimes titled as “Butterfly Orchids,” named by people who found their looks to be reminiscent of butterflies.

Dancing Girls Are Sure to Satisfy a Range of Preferences

Some Dancing Girls — equitants — are are quite petite, and very pretty, and others are large, growing up to five meters high, with grand blooms. They come in all sorts of colors and sizes, sure to please a range of tastes.

Most “Dancing Girls” are epiphytic — they reside on trees, rather than on the ground, and get nourishment from the air. Dancing Girls bloom well and take on a lovely form, and so are choice flowers for anyone just starting to get involved with orchids.

Fertilizer for Oncidium Dancing Girls

Keep in mind that Dancing Girls’ preferences in growing culture is related to they’re from, so they can’t all be treated in the same way. They have been found to be partial to fish emulsion, manure teas, and other organic fertilizers.

Potting Needs of Dancing Girls

Bark based mixtures with perlite and charcoal added, are the standard potting soil for Oncidiums. Oncidiums should be repotted at least every couple years, maybe even every year.

Best Humidity Range of Oncidium Orchids

Humidity should run about 40% to 60%.

Best Temperatures For Our Dancing Dolls

70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit (21°-29° Celsius) night time temperatures of between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (12.8° to 15.6° Celsius)

Special Qualities of Dancing Girls

Dancing Girls are tropical beauties. The oncidium genus encompasses over three hundred species of orchids found in tropical zones of the Americas.

Like many orchids, parts of the Dancing Girls’ stems are round and puff out in bulblike forms, known as a “pseudobulbs.” Each Dancing Girl pseudobulb has a single segment in the stem, known as the internode which is enclosed in a sheath or covered in some other way. The internode joins the nodes, small swellings on the orchids stem out of which the leaves emerge.

The much loved Dancing Dolls are typically yellow shades, but some are pink, purple, red, or white. They range in size from rather tiny to quite large.

While most Dancing Girls are epiphytes living in trees, some varieties are lithophytes residing on rocks or stones, getting nourishment from the atmosphere, or terrestrials and grow in the ground.

Orchids sizes range from those of miniature varieties with blooms that are less than an inch (2.5) in length to enormous varieties that reach heights of over five meters, with leaves or around twelve inches (30 cm) in length and flowers around 4 inches or five inches(10-12.5 cm).

Oncidiums are certainly complex and not fully understood, and classifying them has proven to be a challenge for botanists. While we may not fully understand the ways of Dancing Girls, we can always enjoy the mystery and allure of these beauties.

A Fabulous Indoor Plant

Dancing girls add grace, elegance, drama, and beauty to home decor.

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Image via Wikipedia

by Adam Fulford, InsatiableGardener.com

Olof Swartz was a renowned Swedish botanist of the late 1700s, widely regarded as the world’s first orchid expert. After studying sciences in his native land of Sweden, Olaf Swartz, at the age of 23, sailed across the seas in 1783 to the Caribbean and the Americas, and ventured into forests and tropical jungles, making diligent collections and notes of native flora.

In returning to Europe, Olaf went to England in 1786 to further his botanical studies in the Banksian Herbarium, then back to the world of academia in Sweden, studying a wide range of plants including those he brought with him from his travels. He was particularly enthralled by orchids, organizing them into new genera. He published renowned works with detailed descriptions and illustrations of flowers and their parts. He met his wife in Sweden, and they had a son and daughter.

In 1800, three years after tragically becoming a widower with a son and daughter, Dr. Olaf Swartz published a ground-breaking series of articles on orchids. He is considered to be first person (first European at any rate) to become an orchid expert. He single-handedly discovered and identified thirteen genera of orchids and twenty-seven different species. His most famous work is on the Orchidearum species of the West Indies and the Americas.

It was renowned this Swedish Botanist who first beheld the “Dancing Girls” in 1773, in the jungles of the Americas and immediately became infatuated with them. Circa 1800, he named them “Oncidiums” derived from “onkos,” the Greek word for “swelling.” The name was in reference to formations of the stem and a protuberance of the orchids’ lip.

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