More Than a Flower
The Connective Power of Orchids
Orchids are one of the largest plant families on Earth, with nearly 30,000 species worldwide. They grow on almost every continent, from Guatemalan cloud forests to Madagascan rocky highlands. Their dazzling colors and expansive array of shapes intrigue collectors and inspire artists. Beyond their beauty, orchids bring people together through gardening, collecting, and community plant groups.
Collecting Orchids
Habenaria Tracey
Collecting orchids, and collecting plants in general, is a way of connecting with nature and with others. People often collect a variety of orchids to enhance the beauty of their surroundings and bring nature indoors.
Collecting orchids was traditionally a habit of the wealthy, due to the flowers’ desirability and the specialized equipment and significant time needed to care for them. But by the 20th -century, advances in cultivation and genetics made orchids more affordable to the general public.
John Hope Franklin
Scholar and Orchid Collector
John Hope Franklin in his greenhouse surrounded by orchid plants, including a vanilla orchid.
Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915–2009) was a distinguished scholar of 18th- and 19th-century African American history. Best known for his groundbreaking book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, he first encountered orchids in 1959 while a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii. Upon returning home to Brooklyn, Franklin installed a window greenhouse for his new orchids. He became so enamored with orchids that he received a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to collect orchids during his travels to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.
When Franklin and his wife, Aurelia, moved to Chicago in 1964 and Durham, North Carolina, in 1980, they built greenhouses in both homes. Franklin grew orchids for 50 years, visiting his greenhouse “three or four times a day—not necessarily to work, but just to look and see and enjoy.”
Featured Constellation
The Vanilla Orchid
Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old boy enslaved in Réunion, an island off the coast of eastern Africa, developed a practical method for hand-pollinating the vanilla orchid (vanilla planifolia) in 1841. Before his technique, only euglossine bees could pollinate the orchid. Vanilla is extracted from the pod of the orchid after pollination for use in food, medicine, and fragrance. The vanilla orchid was originally domesticated by Indigenous people in what is now southeastern Mexico. Today, most of the world’s vanilla is produced in Madagascar, near Réunion.
Creating Community Connections
Dendrobium brymerianum
Organized orchid collectors, including African American garden clubs and online plant communities, often see gardening and orchid cultivation as activities that strengthen community connections. African Americans have used such communities and clubs to share resources, trade plants, and preserve knowledge.
I use the whole plant as a display when I use orchids in a design. . . . Orchids are long-lasting; they are beautiful. I do think of [them] as representing beauty and love. Elegance, elegance, elegance!
Wilfreta Baugh, Member of Our Garden Club of Philadelphia and Vicinity
Terry Richardson
Physical Therapist and Orchid Grower
Terry Richardson
After discovering a discarded orchid next to a dumpster at his apartment complex, Terry Richardson nursed it back to health. His 18-month undertaking led to a love for orchids, and soon Richardson was using the social media handle, “The Black Thumb.”
Richardson’s passion connected him to online communities of orchid enthusiasts. Through Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, he now answers questions from fellow collectors and provides tutorials on watering, repotting, and fertilizing. A frequent guest on gardening podcasts and a supporter of urban gardening in Los Angeles, Richardson engages plant enthusiasts from around the world, further strengthening and expanding the orchid community.
Named Orchids
Orchids are sometimes created to celebrate cultural icons and ordinary people with extraordinary legacies. Growers develop hybrids by cross-pollinating two closely related orchids so that the resulting flower has a unique shape, color, fragrance, and shelf-life.
The Royal Horticultural Society in London, England, manages the official register for naming hybrid orchids and tracks the lineage of each one. More than 100,000 hybrids are registered worldwide. Few orchid hybrids or species honor African Americans, and many earlier examples are no longer available. The Smithsonian Institution names orchids to mark major milestones and honor cultural figures. These named orchids illustrate how the Smithsonian connects its work to the people and stories it uplifts, using horticulture as another way to share those narratives.
Orchids Inspire Art
Debora Moore shaping blown glass
Blush Epidendrum - Gigantica. Debora Moore, 2012.
Orchids’ shapes and colors have long inspired artists, making orchids a recurring subject in art, literature, and design. Since the 1980s, Debora Moore has captured the beauty of orchids through her innovative glass sculptures. She has trekked through Southeast Asian jungles and climbed cliffs in the Caribbean to study and sketch orchids in their natural environments.
Moore’s glassblowing techniques mimic textures and details found in nature, such as fuzzy moss on a branch or subtle veins in flower petals. She describes her work as “both a personal meditation on the glorious wonder of nature, as well as a celebration of its power and mystery.”
Orchids at the Rose Parade
“Hawaiian Holiday” float designed by Ham Banks, 1951
Ham Banks and Brenda English standing on the “Freedom Bursts Forth” float and Gertrude Matson, Gilbert Lindsay, and Eula English standing beside it, 1962.
Clarence “Ham” Banks (1907–1978) was a studio florist in Hollywood before designing parade floats for the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, California. In 1940, he became the first African American to work on a Rose Parade float, and by 1964 he had created more than 40 prizewinning designs.
Banks’s 1951 float, “Hawaiian Holiday,” designed for the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, featured thousands of orchids flown in from Hawaii. Painstakingly assembled, it demonstrated Banks’s eye for beauty, assemblage, and artistic flair.
Banks also designed a 1964 float for the Centennial Rose Parade Committee, a group organized by Gertrude Matson to promote inclusion of African Americans in the Rose Parade. Ollie Matson, Gertrude’s son and NFL player, helped fund the float. “Freedom Bursts Forth” commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and was made of a variety of flowers, including orchids. The float won the prize for that year’s parade theme, “Symbols of Freedom.”
Florist Lucille Caines wears her award-winning orchid hat.
Lucille Caines, Florist
Lucille Caines (1898–1978) was one of a small number of Black women of her time to own a flower shop. She opened her flower shop on Seventh Avenue in Harlem, New York, in the 1940s and was known for her extravagant floral arrangements. She supplied Billie Holiday’s famous gardenias and won first prize in the Metropolitan Retail Florists Association’s 1954 show. The only Black florist to participate, she won for her hat made of 315 Hawaiian orchids.
Belle Fleuris. June Gumbel, 2025.
June Gumbel, Milliner
Milliner June Gumbel (b. 1948) uses a variety of fabrics, feathers, and faux flowers to create her unique hats. After noticing a lack of original styles in stores, she began designing headwear in 2011. Some of her hats incorporate orchids; all are meant to make women “feel happy, beautiful, and confident.” And, to make a statement: “When you see a woman wearing a hat . . . you can usually tell what’s in her heart.”
Madelaine’s Angreacum
Angraecum magdalenae
Madelaine’s Angreacum is an orchid from Madagascar. Explore the model to learn about the flower, its habitat, and the threat of deforestation.
Connecting Through Collaboration
More than a Flower: the Connective Power of Orchids is the 30th annual collaborative orchid exhibit between the United States Botanic Garden and Smithsonian Gardens. Orchids have been in the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) living collection since the 1800s. Today, the USBG orchid collection includes nearly 3,000 specimens. The collection also includes hundreds of orchids seized from illegal trafficking, which the USBG safeguards and uses for conservation and education.
Established in 1974, the Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection is a Nationally Accredited Plant Collection™ that preserves orchid biodiversity through science, education, and horticulture. The globally recognized collection features thousands of unique specimens and displays the remarkable variety within the Orchidaceae family, which includes nearly 30,000 documented species.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture and Smithsonian Gardens collaborate to share the history of African American gardens, foodways, and horticultural practices. This exhibition is a part of that partnership.