Welcome to the Coastal Valley Orchid Society web site.   The orchid family is one of the most highly evolved, diverse, numerous, and fascinating groups of plants.   There are more registered orchid hybrids than all other flowering plants combined.   While there are not too many orchids that will survive the heat of the desert or the frigid cold of the Artic, there are several orchids that grow in the United States and in particular the state of California.   One such orchid that grows in and around the Lompoc Valley is Epipactus gigantea.   It is a large sized, cool-to-cold growning terrestrial that is found along rivers and streams, seepage banks and springs with short rhizomes and a tall stem carrying 4-to-12, ovate-lanceolate, acute leaves that blooms in the spring and summer.   The society has chosen this orchid as the society orchid and emblem.

Orchids have been popular since the late Eighteenth Century.   Through the Nineteenth Century, explorers stripped the rain forests and sent back thousands of wild orchids to botanists and wealthy patrons in Europe.   Most perished, since their growing habits were unknown and the locations where they were found were kept secret.

Gradually, growers learned that while tropical orchids are not like other house-plants, they are not especially difficult to grow.   Being epiphytes (plants that grow on trees, clinging to the bark, but not parasites), they do not grow in soil, but in various potting mixes, such as bark, or mounted on cork.