asking stupid questions to a humble celibrity.

I have been admiring Roellke Orchideen s   work since i first discovered  his plants in Monte Porzio Catone, a gorgeous medieval town in Latium, near Rome: The entire medieval town is invaded by orchids stalls, inside the houses. There i bought what traditionalist orchid growers will peresevere in calling Cattleya X Guatemalensis , a natural hybrid  between Cattleya skinneri (Guarianthe ) and Cattleya  ( Guarianthe) aurantiaca. In the first years  of the new millenium, the genius was created by botanists, due to genetic studies, which confirmed it to be a different species from  the genus Cattleya. The great orichod expert Cassio Van Den Berger renamed the Orchid Guarianthe X Laelioides var pachecoi. The name  Guarianthe comes from Guara witch in central spanish means orchid. The Guarianthe skinneri is the official flower of Costa Rica and is associated with the virgin of the Candelaria.
          This orchid is the first orchid which bloomed in my bathroom, when I was between fourteen and  sixteen years of age. Before that I was very unlucky with orchids. But the extreme quality of the plants of the Roellke brothers is extraordinary: No wonder he is a celibrity, and he is very kind and patient with customers, and his knowledge is extraordinary, and so is his collection.
 When you admire someone, you might end up asking stupid questions, and my questions were extrtemely stupid. I started with which genus, do do you prefer. He replied to me in a very calm, nice way, I don t have a favourite genus. I love them all.  People tend to follow fashions in the orchid world, which tend to be very ephemeral, so I don t follow fashions. Mr Roellke is extremely curious and i s always willing to discover new things, and he is extremely humble in his approach, no fashion, just love for orchids. He is interrested in what he does not know and he wants to grow it.
     I realised that reading his extremely, clear, effective, intuitive website (where very precise knowledge of the orchid history and cultivation is dispensed in a very clear way) that i was quite superficial and everything which was to be known was in the website. Documenting oneself properly is the only way to ask decent questions. No matter that Mr Roellke has been kind ( I was just before the opening on the fair, when someone has to take care of the plants before the customers arrive) and patient and this shows that you can be a serious and competent person and yet good with dealing with people.
        He started his collection by taking care of his father s collection. His father was selling some of his orchids, as an extra income to his day job , and Frank Roellke, started working at his father s night job ( the orchid nursery). and transformed it with his brother into a day job, and an international business, selling products of extreme quality. But apart from the economical side, and quality of the products, there is an ethic mission of the nursery, to save rare  species from extinction. If I understood properly, their work on african species is to make them available to the public. What i like about Roellke s is their  non elitist approach to a kind of plants, where there is an elitist aura. In his website there are a lot of products to grow rare plants at home, without needing a greenhouse. So if you want to protect rare orchid species and not only buying phalenopsis at ikea( which are good quality/prize anyway ),  have fantastic quality with a very interresting prize. ( an example is a pahopedilum rothschildianum for 150 euros, which you can find for 1000 euros, it is an expensive plant just because it needs many years to bloom)I m extemely bad with growing orchids, but all his plants are a true sucess. Knowledge of the requirements of the plants is necessary and just the right materials. everything can be find in his website.
       In quite obsessed with the orchids related to the Cattleya alliance, because i lived in brazil , and my grannie was brazilian. when she died we put a cattleya flower arrangement for her funeral. Cattleyas were much loved by Proust , and like old roses, they represent the elegance of the  18 th century and the yeras before the 1st world war . The extreme refinement of litterature, arts etc.. In the importance of being earnest there is also a reference to the rose maréchal niel grown in a greenhouse, like orchids have been since their arrival in europe. I m passionate about the history about orchid hunting in the jungles.
During my worldtrip. I was extremely happy to see Guarianthe skinneri in the wild while in mesoamerica. I landed in Costa Rica, tried to arrrive in corcovado, but managed to see very little, because my ex was moaning, but maged to sleep in the jungle, and even if the trip was very long (8 hrs) and we did not know where to sleep and the roads ssememd bombed, at 11 o clock pm we managed to find a place to sleep and it was pitch dark. I was very disappointed i could see very little. But then we took a bus to nicaragua, then honduras, and finally in Copàn, I managed to see Mayan ruins and Guarianthe Skinneri in the wild, and all my disappointement was gone. From a Guarianthe x laelioposis to a Guarianthe Skinneri seen in the wild. My world trip has been quite dangerous in many levels, so i had my small scale pilgrimage to the great orchid hunters. A dream came true, and all started from this plant i bought when i was a teenager
         

 pictures taken from their  website , with 3 exceptions, taken from the web. In order:
cattleya tianae A.C Burrage
Cattleya (Guarianthe x guatemalensis)  picture taken from the web
Cattleya ( Guarianthe Skinneri)the 2 pictutes are taken from the web
Cattleya walkeriana
Cattleya schroederae