❀About 🛅


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Presenting some of the best orchid species and cultivars from avid growers in Queensland, Australia and the Whole World.

✿❀ Sharing the Joy and Knowledge of Growing Orchids ❀✿

Promoting diverse interchange of sciences, arts, ideas and cultures pertaining to orchids via dynamic, interactive formats with an international horizon.

Culturally, orchids are in themselves fascinating to discover, examine, cultivate and display for enjoyment or competition. Commercially, they are very important ingredients to gardening, floristry and horticulture, involving art, science, technology and the business of producing and marketing flowers and ornamental plants to consumers. Functionally, they are highly diverse and specialized organisms present in many ecosystems worldwide, constituting about 10% of all flowering plant species (angiosperms), and forming countless relationships with other life forms. Indeed, the complexities of orchidaceae are both rooted and manifested in variability, seasonality and regionality.

The state of Queensland in Australia is very important in providing the natural habitats for many species of orchids, especially the epiphytes, as discussed in the post entitled ❀Queensland Orchids❀. According to Australian Orchid Genera – an information and identification system:

Many terrestrial species are prominent flowering elements of the understorey in a range of habitats in the mesic parts of Australia, whereas the majority of epiphytes occur in tropical Queensland.

We would like to welcome you and the whole world with an interactive platform that is serving not only as a dynamic hub equipped with informative websites, social media and communal blog for amassing tips, ideas and findings, but also as the ongoing embodiment of a fully functioning horticultural and artistic community with specific goals and missions towards culturing, promoting and preserving orchids in all their diversity, including static displays, inventive presentations, works of art, video and photography.

Welcome to ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿, a global orchid society and diverse community with an international horizon. It is available for joining or following by all and sundry in various ways from anywhere in Queensland, anywhere in Australia, and any country in the world, regardless of their level of expertise and cultural background.

On the whole, ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ promotes diverse interchange of sciences, arts, ideas and cultures pertaining to orchids via dynamic, interactive formats with an international horizon, welcoming orchids from all regions and cultures in the world, such that the subject matters of stories, photos, videos and other media can be demonstrated or investigated under the rubric of ORCHID FLORAL ART, which includes the following:

✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ also provides a broad and inclusive platform for presenting issues and topics pertaining to ORCHID CULTURE, including but not limited to the following:

In addition, ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ seeks to uncover certain traits, characteristics and uses of various orchids through specific ORCHID FEATURES, which include the following:

Themes and Events

Whilst the diverse interchange of sciences, arts, ideas and cultures pertaining to orchids is presented at ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ in ORCHID FLORAL ART, ORCHID CULTURE and ORCHID FEATURES, the format, relevance, significance and validity of specific topics can be further enhanced or focused under the following themes and events, such as:

Orchids in Perspective

Click here to contact SoundEagleSoundEagle would like to invite all of you to return to this website from time to time, to savour the multimedia, interactive posts and pages, many of which are updated, extended and/or improved as new information and contents become available.

This relatively new and multifaceted website explores the world of orchids through a multitude of perspectives pertaining not only to gardening, botany, horticulture, art, craft, decor, culture, social media, photography, festival, event, history and research, but also to the myriad details of personal stories and human senses, unfolding across the generative processes and intersubjective journeys of discovering, appreciating and preserving the beauty and diversity of orchids, as manifested throughout people’s relationships with their plants, hobbies, professions and surroundings.

The pluralistic experiences offered to you in some highly entertaining multimedia posts and pages comprise beautiful and stylistic presentations of Text, Art, Photos, Videos, Computer & Web Graphics, as well as Games and Animations, many instances of which exemplify the malleability, permeability and cross-fertilization of ideas and cultures, whose fecundity, fluidity and visibility are often facilitated and enhanced by potent rendering tools, social media and emerging technologies, which have various implications for the modulation, transformation and documentation of procedures or practices, including blurring the boundaries of design, creation, interface and workflow, as well as facilitating the understanding of artistry through form, invention, interaction and information.

Under these scenarios, this website has increasingly become a creative, thematic conduit through which fusion, experimentation, appropriation and transformation flow, and where recycling and reinventing can freely combine contrasting or opposing elements from the real and the imaginative, the mundane and the exotic, as well as the secular and the religious, the artistic and the scientific, whilst embracing the richly textured terrains and novel landscapes of the bespoke, unique, controversial or idiosyncratic. Not surprisingly, many traditionally straightforward hobbies and hitherto simple pastimes, including art, craft, gardening and photography, have taken on more heterogeneous characteristics as they intermingle with other domains and interests, becoming more infused with the purviews of other fields and disciplines.

On even larger scales, enthusiasts in landscape ecology, ethnobotany, orchidology, naturescaping and other parallel, related or interdisciplinary specialties can be interested in, or have been researching and writing about, the acoustic, visual, spatial, temporal, sociocultural and/or ecological aspects of certain orchid colonies and landscapes.

It is hoped that some of the offerings on this website can also serve as a bridge, conduit or crossing between the East and the West, between the laypersons and the experts, between the proven and the experimental, between the old data and the new findings, between the documented and the anecdotal, between the cultivated hobby of growing orchids and the mass commodity of commercial plants, by way of judicious translation, edification, promotion and dissemination of information pertaining to the long cultures and traditions that have accompanied certain orchids and their ardent champions through the dynamic synergy of various pursuits and domains, including not just gardening and horticulture but also science and technology, art and craft, literature and poetry, photography and phytoiconography, anthropology and ethnobiology, phytosociology and ethnobotany, phytogeography and geobotany, as well as ecology and conservation.

In turn, these pursuits and domains can become both catalysts and arenas for recognizing, (re)creating and (re)contextualizing orchid-related stories and hobbies with multiple reference points as a means of reflecting and communicating the current state of community and society, and as a way of fostering mutuality, reciprocity and complementarity. They are featured in a variety of themes and formats by ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ as:

Understood in these terms, the value of orchids can truly begin to be appreciated and defined beyond the straightforward results and immediate implications of admiring, studying, cultivating and exhibiting specimens. Growing and knowing orchids can thus become not just an attempt at, or a process of, accruing and capturing beauty, but also a fruitful endeavour to use orchids and their myriad embodiments and representations as a means of expressing ideas as well as principles and forms of beauty.

When, where and how people feel certain affinity towards orchids are communicated by the senses through the language of scents, colours, forms and textures, and also by the interplay of social and environmental factors, insofar as partakers willingly recall, invent, reconstruct or deconstruct their stories about orchid(s), often in conjunction with certain animal(s), people(s) or culture(s).

The experiences and processes involved in growing and knowing orchids reveal how we are initiated into, and captivated by, the influential spheres of flowering plants, in which we routinely find or create opportunities to discover, describe, discuss or realize not only our relationships and affections towards certain species or genera, but also how and where we discover, encounter, procure, admire, photograph and cultivate orchids.

Orchids are patent declarations of their grower’s status and dedication, given that their intrinsic beauties and inimitable morphologies have continued to drive their plentiful devotees to lavish care and admiration, so much so that their human providers have risen to become the unprecedented domesticating force and hybridizing agent in the most recent life and history of this incomparable family of flowering plants. Some devotees like to keep wide-ranging collections of moderately priced orchids tailored to their liking for plants of certain size, colour, theme or growing habit, buying appealing representatives from many genera. Others prefer to focus their energies and resources on rare finds, specific genera, unusual sports, expensive show winners or spectacular specimens.

Indeed, there can be so much to offer and learn through our loves, ideas and pursuits of orchids, for our own foray into knowing and growing orchids can be quite interesting and inspirational in its own right, regardless of specific aims or outcomes. Curating or documenting our journey of discovery and learning in the complex world of orchids can put many things in perspective, and offer a chance to reflect on how far we have come, and where we would like to explore or improve further, in order to enhance the sustained enjoyment that orchids bring into our lives. Whilst orchids continue to provide the taste of the ever-changing seasons in gardening, the fashion of the latest hybrids in horticulture, and the delight of newly discovered species in botany, ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿ can be regarded as a versatile and multilayered platform on which various forms of communicating about orchids are diverse points of reference and departure within and between the widely distributed (horti)cultural practices of the contemporary world, (re)negotiated and (re)produced routinely in social relations and in the spheres of art and science, as well as in the shared dynamics of the social media, knowledge industry and cultural economy.

You are hereby welcome to interact with ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿, where you can like, share and comment on photos, videos and stories of orchids, as you can on Facebook and other social media, as shown below.
Subscription Form
Queensland Orchid International Subsribe

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Facebook Integration

Visit the Queensland Orchid International Facebook Group to join, share photos and videos, leave comments, have discussions, as well as post questions and answers.

Photo & Video Contributions

Those who are interested in contributing photos or videos can upload them to the Queensland Orchid International Facebook Group.

Excellent or exceptional photos and videos uploaded to the group may be featured in the Gallery sections of various posts to provide exemplary visual documentations of orchids.

✿❀ Objectives ❀✿

  • To promote learning and discovery as well as to foster diverse interaction and creative synergy amongst individuals, societies, organizations and other entities interested in orchid culture and horticulture generally.
  • To seek, collect, identify, develop, categorise, preserve, present or disseminate (intellectual or ecological) knowledge pertaining to orchids, particularly their natural history, cultivation and hybridization, as well as their representation and embodiment in art, science and culture.
  • To provide a forum or conduit for conducting or presenting research and educational activities into various aspects of orchidaceae.
  • To increase the recognition and survival of threatened species and native flora through sharing and promoting farsighted practices in conservation, cultivation and sustainable development.
Thanks to Curtin University and the University of Western Australia for sponsoring this video. Also, special thanks to Kingsley Dixon and the Orchid Specialist Group of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.

Species Featured in this video:
– Phantom Orchid (Cephalanthera austiniae)
– Bee orchid (Ophrys apifera)
– Fly orchid (Ophrys insectifera)
– Mirror orchid (Ophrys speculum)
– Red Helleborine Orchid (Cephalanthera rubra)
– Nettle-leaved bellflower (Campanula trachelium)
– Hammer orchid (Drakaea glyptodon)
– Wasp (Zaspilothynnus trilobatus)
– Lady’s slipper orchids (Cypripedium calceolus)
– Dracula orchids (Dracula terborchii and Dracula andreettae)
– Spider orchids (Genus Caladenia)
– Cigar Orchid (Cyrtopodium punctatum)
– Venus slipper (Paphiopedilum Maudiae)

✿❀ Contact ❀✿

Dtps. Golden City 'Fong Ping' HCC/QOS 1997

〠 Contact SoundEagle if you wish to publish some article(s) with ✿❀ Queensland Orchid International ❀✿, or want more interaction or communication, or like to submit inquiries or service request, or wish to employ SoundEagle’s expertise.

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Colour plate "Orchids" from German biologist Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur

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3 thoughts on “❀About 🛅”

    • Thank you, petrel41 (DearKitty1), for recognizing the quality of, and for conferring the Very Inspiring Blogger Award on, the new website of The Queensland Orchid Society Inc. as created and designed by SoundEagle. This is the very first award for a website that has been launched for hardly a fortnight. May you return to enjoy its contents from time to time, as there are many very dedicated and knowledgeable growers in the society!

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