Free Republic

Known by the scientific name Vanilla tahitensis, Tahitian vanilla is found to exist only in cultivation; natural, wild populations of the orchid have never been encountered... "All the evidence points in the same direction," Lubinsky said. "Our DNA analysis corroborates what the historical sources say, namely, that vanilla was a trade item brought to Tahiti by French sailors in the mid-19th century. The French Admiral responsible for introducing vanilla to Tahiti, Alphonse Hamelin, used vanilla cuttings from the Philippines. The historical record tells us that vanilla – which isn't native to the Philippines – was previously introduced to the region...

When relatives visited Brighton Kaoma’s childhood home in the Copperbelt Province of central Zambia, they’d come bearing gifts: oblong brown chikanda, freshly dug from the earth of the family’s ancestral village. The tubers weren’t from yams or potatoes. Instead, they were foraged from the wild orchids that dot the dambos, or grasslands, of northern Zambia, their ornate blossoms shocks of color in the marshy knolls Kaoma’s family, who belong to the Bemba people of Zambia’s Northern and North-Western Provinces, would grind the tubers with peanuts and chiles, then boil them with water and soda to form a cake. Also called...

Add this to the ongoing list of fun facts about the Trump family: Melania Trump has an orchid named after her. The flower is a hybrid orchid known as Rhyncholaeliocattleya Melania Trump, or "Rlc Melania Trump," and it even won an award this weekend. When you know the context, the fact that this flower exists isn't so bizarre. It was created by Chadwick & Son Orchids Inc., a company that breeds orchids and has a longstanding tradition of naming flowers after the spouses of the two leading presidential candidates during election years. The company gave both Melania Trump and Bill...

Turns out the early Romans were wild about orchids. A careful study of ancient artifacts in Italy has pushed back the earliest documented appearance of the showy and highly symbolic flowers in Western art from Renaissance to Roman times. In fact, the researchers say, the orchid's popularity in public art appeared to wilt with the arrival of Christianity, perhaps because of its associations with sexuality... A few years ago, botanist Giulia Caneva of the University of Rome (Roma Tre) set out to change that. Working with several graduate students, she began assembling a database of Italian artifacts, including paintings, textiles,...

I'm sorry for the vanity. A month ago I purchased a Phalaenopsis orchid for my new breakfast nook table. It was an impulse purchase, and I've since impulsively purchased another orchid. Now I'm wondering how to keep them healthy, because they're so beautiful. I'd also like to purchase more, but I'm afraid I'll kill them. Are there any orchid growers in the house?

President Barack Obama has brought a more relaxed style to the White House, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times, among other things going suit coat-less in the Oval Office and allowing others to do the same. Obama critics will probably hold this against him and mark him down as disrespecting the presidency. But the Oval Office is an office after all, even if it is the world's most famous one. At bottom, it is a work space albeit it holds an almost sacred place in the hearts of many Americans. Most Americans probably won't begrudge Obama...

We are all becoming criminals. Here is yet another example of the Government overreaching its authority and criminalizing ordinary citizens who had no intention of breaking the law. In 2006, Federal Agents burst through the door of the home Kathy and George Norris, 60 and 66 year old Grandparents of six grandchildren. They ransacked the house, overturned drawers, emptied bookshelves, threw the Norris' belongings on the floor and searched their home. Were these SWAT clothed agents from the FBI? The ATF? Homeland Security? Nope. They were from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....and their mission: Looking for illegal orchids. Read...

"You don't need to know. You can't know." That's what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search. No, this didn't happen in a Kafkaesque novel like The Trial. No it didn't happen in the old USSR or in any of its satellite countries, or even in a fascist police state. No, gentle reader, it happened right here on our very own shores!

Orchids. These brilliant, flashy, sensual, and sometimes graphic flowers fascinated Charles Darwin. In his book, On The Various Contrivances By Which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised By Insects, he wrote: "In my examination of Orchids, hardly any fact has so much struck me as the endless diversity of structure ... for gaining the very same end, namely, the fertilisation of one flower by the pollen of another." To Darwin, orchids were vivid examples of natural selection and of mechanisms that develop over generations to best ensure the perpetuation of the species. This year the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural...