Downtown lust for orchids leaves forests flowerless

Doi Can Road in the centre of Thai Nguyen gets more and more crowded every weekend, as city dwellers head out to pick up popular forest orchids.

While the growing adoration of orchids is great for mountain dwellers who make a living off collecting the flowers, the movement is proving devastating for the health of orchids in the wild.

According to the locals, the orchid trend sprung up rather spontaneously. The market started just 10 years ago but has grown enormously as people have become increasingly interested in forest orchids.

On weekends, hundreds of species of forest orchids are brought from different mountainous regions including Cao bang Bac Kan, Yen Bai and Thai Nguyen. The rough-looking sellers are on hand to answer questions, usually knowing first hand where the orchids came from.

Orchids’ sad destiny

With orchids not growing very well in the city, city dwellers are dependant on the Doi Can market, counting on hard-working farmers willing to make the trek into the city to sell the flowers.

For 10 years Tran Thi Tham from the small town of Du, nearly 12km from Thai Nguyen centre, has been bringing orchids to sell in the city.

"The flowers that I sell here are collected by my husband from Ba Be (Bac Kan), Cao Bang and Yen Bai," said Tham, noting that the Ba Be National Park is a great place to hunt for flowers.

"There are times that my husband finds a precious orchid worth millions of dong."

Since its prohibited to collect flowers from Ba Be, Tham’s husband has to hunt for the flowers at night. With their growing popularity, collecting orchids has become an occupation for many mountainous region inhabitants.

The Voi forest, in Dong Hy, Thai Nguyen, was once famous for its many kinds of precious orchids. It is now nearly empty as the precious forest orchids have disappeared.

According to Hoang Thi Yen from Dong Hy, those who survive on selling orchids now have to travel to remote mountainous regions. "The job is much more difficult than it was 10 years ago because the source of orchids has been exhausted."

"If forest orchids continue to be sold on the streets so much, in 10 years our children will only be able to see forest orchids on television or in pictures," said Ngo Thanh Huong, one customer.

Preserving the flowers

To preserve the Vietnamese orchids, a web site was recently set up to unite all orchid lovers www.hoalanvietnam.org. The site hosts a number of articles explaining how to plant orchids, provides information on orchids festivals in the world, and displays various pictures of orchids.

The movement to harvest orchids is now flourishing throughout provinces and cities in Viet nam with thousands of people taking part. Most provinces and cities have even formed their own orchid associations. The Ha noi Orchid Association alone has around five clubs with hundreds of members.

According to Doctor Nguyen Tien Hiep, director of the National Centre for Natural Science and Technology under the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, the best way to preserve orchids is to cultivate the various species.

"To multiply some species of forest orchids, the most ideal way is that the genes are taken from the seeds of fruits of parents orchids and sowed in test tubes.

"The advantage of this method is that we can create at the same time many small plants from a single sowed pollen," Hiep said.

(Source: VNS)

Tag: Festival , Ha Noi , National Park , Thai Nguyen , Travel , Viet Nam , Vietnam , Vietnamese

Downtown lust for orchids leaves forests flowerless

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