The Missouri Botanical Garden has a long and proud history of involvement with orchids. The first specimens were given to Henry Shaw in the early 1870s by Mrs. Henry T. Blow. Her collection was the result of plants collected in Brazil by her husband while he served as Minister to Brazil under President Grant. The collection grew steadily until 1918, when the largest public display of orchids ever held in St. Louis was made at the Christmas Show. Limited by today’s standards, the show was billed as an “orchid collection which excels all in the United States”.
Just two years later came the flowering of the first hybrid developed here at the Garden. It was Paphiopedilum, the first of many. In 1923, G.H. Pring of the Missouri Botanical Garden staff set off to Panama and Colombia on a trip to collect orchids and other economic plants. He returned with 5,000 Cattleyas, clearly a successful trip. In 1926, the Garden established a tropical field station in Panama with the cooperation of the Canal Zone Government. Orchid collection began in earnest.
By 1926, orchids at the Garden were being threatened by the industrial smoke and smog of the city, so the orchid collection was moved to the newly acquired Shaw Arboretum at Gray Summit, Missouri, 35 miles outside of St. Louis. They were placed in a range of greenhouses built especially to house the collection. In 1927, an orchid seedling department was begun.
Through gifts and collecting, the orchid collection grew in size and prominence. In 1954, St. Louis was the site of the first World Orchid Congress. By 1958, conditions in the city had improved to the point that the orchid collection was returned to the Garden.
Today the Missouri Botanical Garden’s orchid collection still represents one of the largest and finest in the United States. The garden has well over 5,000 orchid plants, representing 686 unique taxa. There are a total of 2,179 plants that are species (multiple plants per species). The remainder of the collection is cultivated hybrids (approximately 4,125 specimens; multiple plants per cultivar). 1,438 cultivated hybrids are represented in the collection.
Orchids can be viewed in rotating Climatron® orchid displays, as well as the annual Orchid Show hosted each February in the Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center's Emerson Conservatory.