Rescuing the National Flower: Costa Rica's Orchid Repropagation Program

Children look up at the pur-plish-red orchids hanging from the trees. They happily cry: "Hey! It's guaria morada, the national flower!"

Besides the endangered national flower, other rare orchids including the C. dowiana （right, photo by Chen Kuan-chou）, Tricopilia suavis （below）, and Phychopsis krameriana （left）, will be transplanted to national parks.

Costa Rica, located in the southern hemisphere, was once an orchid kingdom built by nature. And guaria morada, with her huge flowers, was the object of much admiration. However, because of her resplendent beauty, people coveted her; some kidnapped her and her kind. These days it's hard to find any trace of them in the mountains.

The national flower, commonly known as the guaria morada, has inspired countless popular songs over the ages.

It was only beginning last year that guaria morada and other rare orchid species of Costa Rica finally were able to reappear, after a long absence, in their old homeland. It turns out that there is a group of horticulture experts, who come from a country at the same latitude as Costa Rica, but in the eastern hemisphere-Taiwan. These agricultural technicians, working with the Costa Rican government and local flower growers, have already transplanted the first group of successfully repropagated orchids to national parks. This is a story enriched by the sweet smell not only of flowers, but of sentiment.

The Simon Bolivar National Zoo and Botanical Garden is located in the suburbs of San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. It is the most popular outdoor classroom for local schoolchildren. In the park are red frogs, funny-looking anteaters, and jaguars, once worshipped by the Mayas. And there are 145 varieties of flowers native to Costa Rica. Today, this is the only park in the nation to have the national flower.

Rich coast

In the park, the guaria morada grows on one tree after another. Before coming here, some children may have seen one in granny's back yard, but most others have never seen one at all. The 31-year-old director of the botanical area of the Bolivar Park, Gustavo Vargas, says, "Even I have never seen a guaria morada in a natural setting." Thus he hopes to grow more of them in the park so that children can really know what the national flower looks like.

In 1502, the first time that Columbus set foot on this ground, two-thirds of the land was covered with forest. The resident Native Americans looked prosperous, so he called this place the "rich coast," or Costa Rica. The coastal regions were the kingdom of mangrove swamps. In the lowlands on the east coast was tropical rain forest. The mountains inland had much valuable timber.

But two-and-a-half centuries of Spanish colonial rule brought large-scale planting of coffee, sugar cane, and other cash crops. Wherever earth movers have gone, the forest has been destroyed. Mahogany once covered the mountains; now there are only about thirty surviving trees in the entire country, one of which is in Bolivar Park. It is only about ten centimeters tall, not even reaching one's knees. Gustavo Vargas, who has been pressed into service as our guide, says that the tree is three years old. Mahogany-which is called "guayacan" in Costa Rica-is so hard it is virtually impossible to drive a nail into it. So local people call a strong man "Guayacan."

Vargas says that damage to the environment has awakened the consciousness of Costa Ricans, and there is a consensus to protect nature. In 1990, after the government established a ministry for natural resources and the environment (whose Spanish acronym is MINAE), 50,000 square kilometers of land-a full quarter of all remaining forest-was made into ten protected areas, and 24 national parks. More than 700 conservation officers do wildlife surveys and park protection on a full-time basis (please see the accompanying article).

Home of the orchid

Costa Rica has been nicknamed "Little Switzerland." Located in the tropics, it includes dry tropical forest, tropical rain forest, mountain valleys, and more. It has very complex topography, with plains, swamps, rain forest, and mountains up to 3,500 meters high. Thus, though its area is only 1.5 times that of Taiwan, or 0.01% of the world's surface, it has more than 500,000 varieties of flora and fauna, or 5% of the world total. Of these, the number of orchid varieties is really amazing.

Santiago Huang, who is in charge of the orchid program for Taiwan's Agricultural Technical Mission (ATM) in Costa Rica, makes the following analysis: Around the world, orchids are concentrated in places at about 30 degrees latitude. Both Costa Rica and Taiwan are located in this zone. There are about 700-800 families of orchids in the world, and nearly 35,000 species. Taiwan has more than 300 species, which is enough to be considered quite fortunate. Costa Rica, by comparison, is home to about 1500 species. It is an orchid-lovers' paradise.

Empress Orchid

Most of the orchids in Costa Rica are parasitic. After trees were cut, orchids were just cast aside. Fortunately people have always been concerned about this. Landkaster Botanical Garden, attached to the University of Costa Rica, specially collects orchids. Inside the botanical garden, all the trees-even the palm trees-are densely covered with orchids. The roughly 1000 varieties of native Costa Rican orchids here were mostly saved from felled trees.

Besides exploitation of the forests, another major reason for the decline of flowers in Costa Rica is people who pluck them illegally. Landkaster director Dora Emilia Retana, wearing orchid-shaped earrings, points to ten or so orchids in a box: "The more beautiful the flower, the more likely it is to be stolen. These are all orchids from people who were caught poaching them [from protected areas in the mountains]. After their trial, the MINAE decided to send these to the park to be replanted." She also says that, of the orchids sent for replanting, there are fewer and fewer rare species. This suggests that even flower poachers-or "mountain rats," as they are known-are finding it more and more difficult to find rare species in the mountains.

When you mention the guaria morada, Taiwanese might not be too familiar with it, because this word comes from a Native American language, and simply means "purple-red flower that grows on the tree." However, if you use its academic name, Cattleya skinneri, you can be sure that orchid growers in Taiwan will know it.

The main reason why the C. skinneri is so popular is because of its large flowers. Moreover, it has the special characteristic that each stem can produce as many as 15 flowers. This is an even more important gene in the cultivation of orchids. In the 1985 US orchid association competition, a mutated white C. skinneri set a record by producing 2500 flowers on a single plant, winning the grand prize. That prize-winning orchid came from Costa Rica. As early as 1939, the C. skinneri had the glory of being named Costa Rica's national flower.

Orchids everywhere

In Costa Rica, all four seasons are like spring. It is a natural orchid greenhouse, and Costa Ricans at all levels of society love their orchids. In the past, people working in the lumber industry in the mountains liked to stick orchids in their hats, singing happily all the way home. And even in the office of the president of Costa Rica, there are orchids everywhere: On the wall are a number of oil paintings featuring these flowers, and pots of orchids sit on a low bureau and tea table, unobtrusively emitting their lovely fragrance.

In the well-known Herradura Hotel in San Jose, where Lee Teng-hui held a press conference on his visit to Costa Rica, there is a horticulture room in the hotel, in which all the flowers are orchids. The hotel owner hopes that soon every tree in the hotel will have orchids growing on them. However, in Costa Rica the elegant orchid is an upper-grade flower. To rent a pot of orchids for decoration costs 5000 colon (roughly NT$500). That's quite expensive; it's better to raise them yourself.

In the hotel we met Beida, who is in charge of the horticulture room. Beida once was in prison for 34 months for killing someone by accident. Because of his good behavior in prison, during his term he was sent to the national vocational training institute (the Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje, or INA), with which Taiwan's Agriculture Technical Mission cooperates. He studied orchid cultivation for three years. His superior says that Beida is an expert at transplanting and repotting, and it is hard to find people with his skills. Beida doesn't talk much, but did tell us: "I really like this job, because orchids are beautiful and pure, and they never cause me any trouble."

Whether it be Beida or the orchid raisers at the national parks, virtually all have gone through the INA and learned good instincts for orchid cultivation from the Taiwan ATM.

Looking for an orchid-sitter

One orchid pod can have hundreds of thousands of-even a million-seeds. But they cannot provide basic nutrition to the seeds. Their survival depends on specialized orchid bacteria. In the end, not more than one or two seeds successfully sprout. They grow and propagate very slowly, so when a forest area is destroyed or the flowers are ravaged by illegal picking, orchid species easily become endangered.

Thus, the Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture, the MINAE, the Tourism Bureau, and the INA have worked with the ROC's ATM in Costa Rica to develop a counter-strategy. A parent plant collection room, a tissue culture laboratory, and a seedling cultivation lab have been set up in the INA. The ATM is in charge of the technical work of plant tissue culturing and propagation. Endangered orchids are propagated artificially in large numbers. Also, classes are offered to train specialists so that in the future, when orchids are replanted in the nation's parks, there will be experts to look after them. Ultimately, locals will take over all the tasks of sustainable orchid reproduction.

INA director Clara Zomer says that this project achieves many objectives at the same time. It artificially propagates endangered species, providing large numbers of rare orchids for replanting in parks; it improves the country's tourist resources; and it upgrades Costa Rica's plant tissue culture technology, which can be used for improvement and reproduction of other plants in the future. Moreover, it also helps local orchid growers to move from cultivation as a hobby to cultivation as a profitable economic activity. If local growers can be helped to increase the supply of orchids on the legal market, that would cut off the black market demand that keeps the mountain rats in business.

In fact, tissue culture cultivation is something that Costa Rica got involved in 25 years ago. But it has always been stuck at the level of academic research. Moreover, the focus of research has been on palm trees. "Studies and activities related to orchid tissue cultures really only began with the ROC ATM. The technology has been gradually transferred to the private sector, and is showing practical results," says Juan Carlos Gonzales, director of the model farm at the INA.

Cloned flowers

In the tissue culture lab at the INA, technician Kung Chi-ping is busy producing tens of thousands of precious orchid babies. He explains that there are two production methods, the first of which is sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction is done in a bacteria-free environment, where an appropriate nutritional foundation is provided to the orchid seeds, substituting for the nursemaid bacteria that the orchid has in the wild. The nutritional base is added to the already mixed medium. Depending upon the tastes of various types of orchids, it may have banana, potato, coconut, apple, or other foods high in sugar, calcium, and magnesium. Technicians must carefully observe the growth of flower roots and leaves and change the nutrients depending upon the situation. If they choose incorrectly, after the seeds are sown, not only will the rate at which the plants sprout be low, the sprouts will grow slowly, and may even wither and die.

Asexual reproductive technology is one step beyond. First, superior orchid buds are selected. A small growing point is removed using a surgical knife. Then it is cloned to produce a genetically identical orchid, just as in the recent cloning of a sheep. Currently the INA mostly uses the sexual reproductive method, producing 100,000-140,000 sprouts per year, depending upon demand.

A nation of flower-lovers

Besides producing more than 100,000 orchid sprouts per year, the tissue culture lab also offers classes. The ATM offers a course through the INA vocational training center which includes classes in "Orchid Cultivation Management," "Plant Tissue Culture," and "Decorative Plants." The classes are quite popular. For the "Orchid Cultivation Management" class, for example, which requires 75 hours of class time (half days for three weeks), so far more than 800 people, men and women, young and old, have been through the class.

A woman named Helena, 46 years old and a homemaker, wants to teach her children about orchids. She says: "After all, this is a nature-loving nation, and we have already lost so many orchids." The 45-year-old Cavan works in a national park headquarters. He wants to learn some techniques so that he can participate in the park's repropagation work. He thus took a two-week vacation from his job to attend, and the park agreed to add on a week of official leave so that he could finish the class.

A man named Vincente, 59, is taking the spot of a friend who signed up but then couldn't come. The others in the course say he is very lucky, because the waiting list has more than 1200 names.

Lilianna, a lecturer at the INA farm, says happily: "People have come here for training from Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Panama, and the Caribbean countries." It's obvious that the reputation of the ATM in Costa Rica has really "blossomed." Correspondingly, the INA has devoted increasing attention to the orchid program. Of the $60 million colon annual budget, the orchid program takes one-third.

The Mom orchid company

There are less than ten large orchid-growing operations in Costa Rica. The remainder are mostly orchid-lovers who cultivate on a small scale. These growers mainly rely on methods gleaned from books or learned by trial-and-error. Usually they don't know when the best time to fertilize is, so that the orchids either bloom too early (producing flowers with poor nutrition), or grow leaves but no blossoms. "Orchids have a lot of vitality, and it's hard to cultivate so poorly that they die. On the other hand, to produce orchids of commercial standard is not easy," says Santiago Huang of the ATM.

To promote commercial orchid-growing, the ATM has brought in cultivation techniques which were used on Taiwan's well-known butterfly orchid. According to the market research office of the INA, 90% of the butterfly orchids on the market in Costa Rica come from the INA's orchid garden. In the small town of Grecia, about 90 kilometers from the capital, a group of homemakers who grow orchids in their spare time have organized a class to receive instruction from the INA. Each household grows 1500-3000 orchids, and they have organized a co-operative to sell them to flower markets and hotels, setting themselves along the road of commercial cultivation.

Presently, small growers like these homemakers mainly get their seedlings from the INA. Each year the INA holds two sprout sales, in February and September. Although they limit eligible buyers to people who have been through the orchid cultivation course, competition is fierce: Because the prices charged by the INA are much less than the black-market prices, people always begin to line up the night before.

A woman from the homemaker's co-operative named Anna says, "Black market trade has been undercut by the INA." For example, mountain rats want 8000 colon for one rare Phychopsis krameriana orchid. But the INA charges only about C250 for each of its mass-propagated Phychopsis krameriana orchids.

Taiwan Sugar eyes new business

Speaking of commercial cultivation of orchids, Taiwan Sugar Corporation, the leading authority on orchids in Taiwan, acting with the assistance of the ATM and ROC Ambassador to Costa Rica Mao Kao-wen, is planning to invest more than NT$100 million in orchid cultivation operations in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica's environment is ideal for large-scale cultivation of these flowers, which can be sensitive. In terms of climate, the average temperature does not vary by more than 3蚓 year-round, and there are no typhoons. Costa Rica is a natural greenhouse, and there is no need to pay for equipment to compensate for cold or hot weather periods. In terms of transportation, the main markets for TaiSugar orchids are Japan and the US; Costa Rica has the advantage of being only three hours by air from Miami. Also, since cut-flower exports of Costa Rica's own Demdrobium densiplorum orchid already are fifth in the US import market, packaging and transport technology is already in place in Costa Rica. In addition, there is ample manpower, and the Costa Rican government offers attractive incentives, which are additional incentives for TaiSugar.

One further advantage of Costa Rica is that the ATM was already in place to provide TaiSugar with all kinds of essential data-on climate, sunshine, temperature, rainfall, the current production and export situation, and even policy analysis.

From an ATM's point of view, there are bound to be bottlenecks when relying only on their own limited manpower and scarce government funds to try to greatly upgrade agricultural technology in the cooperating country. That is why the ATM in Costa Rica was so enthusiastic about helping TaiSugar's investment plan. It will introduce commercial management techniques and advanced high-tech cultivation techniques, creating many new job opportunities in the process. These will attract even greater attention to the repropagation of orchids, and spread the repropagated orchids more widely than the ATM alone could have done.

Saving dowiana

Because there are so many species of orchid in Costa Rica, the ATM had a difficult time deciding which of the native varieties to propagate. Three years ago, quite by accident, Santiago Huang was browsing through a US orchid magazine and he saw that the CITES treaty, covering endangered species, listed five varieties of orchid native to Costa Rica as nearly extinct.

The five include the Cattleya skinneri (which includes the alba alba-oculata, a white mutated species); the yellow C. dowiana; the Phychopsis krameriana, known for its resemblance to flapping butterfly wings; the Tricopilia suavis; and the beautiful Peristeria elata, the national flower of Panama, which looks like a dove sticking its head out of its nest.

These endangered species are very rarely seen in the wild today. The dowiana is especially delicate. Its needs are unlike other orchids: It prefers moisture and high temperatures, and requires lots of sunlight. Some aficionados have been planting them all their lives and still have never seen one blossom. The only place in the world suitable for them to grow is the Turiala Valley in Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the valley lies near the active volcano of Irazu. A 1963 eruption virtually eradicated all the native dowiana. The pre-ciousness of the dowiana lies not only in its rarity, however. It is also the main source of genetic material for yellow coloring for species cross-breeding.

Naturally-existing species are valuable not only because they may be rare, but because artificially-bred commercial species come from the cross-breeding of outstanding natural varieties. To produce the brightly colored commercial species, large orchid growing companies collect superior natural specimens from all over the world, paying very high prices, to serve as parent flowers for cross-breeding. For a grower to have a dowiana on hand is really impressive.

The ATM already has the equipment and technology for repropagation of orchids. The only problem is to collect superior samples of the endangered species. The ATM cannot collect them from the mountains, nor buy them from the mountain rats. Fortunately, students in the class, cooperating orchid farms, or members of the local orchid association usually have samples of these rare flowers.

"The smooth progress of repropagation depends not only on cooperation from officially affiliated agencies, it also depends on ordinary citizens taking the initiative to bring us samples," says Santiago Huang, who praises the Costa Ricans' fondness for flowers and enthusiasm for helping. With everyone's help, not only are endangered species being propagated in large numbers using tissue culturing, they are being returned to the wild. The national flower has been transplanted to the Simon Bolivar National Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and the butterfly-shaped Phychopsis krameriana has been planted in the Guanacaste National Park in the north. The orchid paradise of days past is slowly being restored.

Song of the orchid

In a residential area in San Jose, an elderly couple have planted many guaria morada on their windowsill. An old wheelbarrow by the door is also filled with orchids. The old woman says, with deep emotion, that you used to be able to see beautiful orchids in the forest everywhere. You could even see the guaria morada growing on the roof tiles on people's homes. But, sadly, that is rare today. As we chat and chat, the woman sings a tune well-known to Costa Ricans, whose words go:

On the tile on the earthern wall,

Her petals wave gently,

The beautiful guaria morada,

Flower of this sacred land.

When night falls,

And the golden sparrow sings its song,

She glitters like a star,

Dangling from the branches.

On the tile on the earthen wall,

By the boulder next to the river,

The guaria morada,

Is the most beautiful of national

flowers.

She symbolizes all that is

praiseworthy,

And like rosy clouds at sunrise,

Opens her arms to shelter Costa Rica.

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Large areas of tropical rainforest have made Costa Rica-the "rich coast"-one of few the places in the world where orchids flourish naturally.

The orchid is the national flower of Costa Rica, and its presence-in pots and oil paintings-even pervades the office of the president.

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Besides the endangered national flower, other rare orchids including the C. dowiana (right, photo by Chen Kuan-chou), Tricopilia suavis (below), and Phychopsis krameriana (left),will be transplanted to national parks.

p.45

The national flower, commonly known as the guaria morada, has inspired countless popular songs over the ages.

p.46

Schoolchildren often come to visit the INA's orchid room, built with the help of Taiwan's Agriculture Technical Team. It's clear how important environmental protection is to the people of Costa Rica.

p.47

One orchid seed pod may include tens of thousands of seeds, but they lack the natural nutrients necessary to survive without help.

Most orchids in Costa Rica grow parasitically on trees, and need intact forest to survive.

p.48

Through the efforts of these Chinese and Costa Ricans, five orchid species listed as endangered under CITES have been given a new lease on life.

p.49

Assisted by the ATM, Taiwan's leading orchid grower-Taiwan Sugar Corporation-is planning to invest more than NT$100 million in Costa Rica for cultivation of butterfly orchids.

(photo by Vincent Chang)

p.50

This elderly flower-loving couple fills their windowsill with orchids they have raised themselves. It's not an uncommon sight in Costa Rica.

Schoolchildren often come to visit the INA's orchid room, built with the help of Taiwan's Agriculture Technical Team. It's clear how important environmental protection is to the people of Costa Rica.

One orchid seed pod may include tens of thousands of seeds, but they lack the natural nutrients necessary to survive without help.

Most orchids in Costa Rica grow parasitically on trees, and need intact forest to survive.

Through the efforts of these Chinese and Costa Ricans, five orchid species listed as endangered under CITES have been given a new lease on life.

Assisted by the ATM, Taiwan's leading orchid grower--Taiwan Sugar Corporation--is planning to invest more than NT$100 million in Costa Rica for cultivation of butterfly orchids. （photo by Vincent Chang）

This elderly flower-loving couple fills their windowsill with orchids they have raised themselves. It's not an uncommon sight in Costa Rica.