By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Walter Hiraishi crossbreeds oncidium species,
seeking mutants of the "dancing ladies" flowers.
Orchid fanciers
cultivate changeGrowers hope to attract amateurs with new
hybrids, smaller plants and other innovationsIF you have friends visiting from the mainland, and you want to knock their socks off, take them to the Windward Orchid Society's 19th annual Spring Show by way of the H-3 freeway next weekend.
The show, which opens a week from today, features a magnificent collection of healthy flowering orchid plants, and the ride over the new highway is spectacular. Actually, you don't need visitors, it's worth the trip alone.
Walter Hiraishi, show chairman, promises not only the familiar cattleyas and dendrobiums, but a variety of orchids that are unfamiliar to all but the most avid collectors.
Hiraishi, who lives in the shadow of Olomana in Kailua, is an orchid hybridizer and grower. "I try to raise plants that most people don't have," he said. "I leave the vandas and the phalaenopsis to other growers."
His specialty is intergeneric hybrids within the oncidium alliance. Now, that's a lot of long words and exactly what the Windward Orchid Society is trying to escape.
Specialty orchid growers are anxious to demystify their hobby, to bring in amateurs who will not be put off by a lot of Latin terms. Hiraishi's specialty is the crossing of orchid plants between related families, not simply within the same species. The oncidium genus includes about 600 species, and his crosses are among those species.
Oncidium blossoms, popularly called "dancing ladies," are often small flowers commonly in combinations of yellow and brown and occasionally in lavender and white. "I look for mutants," Hiraishi said. Mutants are a sudden variation in inherited characteristics that differ from the parent plants, a touch of lavender showing up on an orchid that ought to be pure white or a different shape.
Hiraishi has turned his 15,000-foot lot into greenhouses for his collection. His back yard contains two greenhouses, one covered with 30 percent shade cloth, the other with 70 percent shade cloth.. His epidendrums, vandas and cymbidiums live in less shade, while his oncidiums and seedlings grow in heavier shade. The wind sweeps down behind his house, and brings fresh air to his plants. "You need air circulation for good orchids. They don't like dead air."
Next weekend look for the Iwanaga-ara apple blossom cattleyas that he'll be selling at the orchid show. Developed by a grower named Iwanaga, the flowers are the same pink and ivory colors as an apple blossom. "They flower sequentially on the spike," Hiraishi said, "not all at once, so you have flowers on the plant for several weeks."
Hiraishi's honohono orchids are coming into flower, and he will be selling some of them, too. He specializes in the smaller plants. There is a tendency, he said, to think big with honohono, and growers aim for plants that will fill a wheelbarrow. "They're pretty spectacular while they flower, but it's not that long," Hiraishi said. "The rest of the year, they're nothing much and they takes a lot of space."
He added that orchids, like rock stars, go in and out of popularity. "For a while, everybody loved lady slipper orchids, then vandas, then honohono. After a while, when nobody's raising them much any more, somebody says, 'What ever happened to honohono?' so they start up again. But now, everybody wants smaller plants. Houses are smaller, people live in apartments. So I have smaller honohonos."
Another winner is the Pupukea Sunset, a miltontia orchid with dark red and yellow flowers that appear year 'round. And there's the dendrobium Nellie Slade with white flowers that often bloom twice a year.
Hiraishi recommends that orchids be potbound and that transplanting them to larger pots should be done only infrequently. Some growers say that every three years is about right, and at the time when new roots begin to sprout, usually in the spring and sometimes in the summer. "Orchids don't like to be touched," Hiraishi said.
Most of the orchids he sells are in 4-inch pots, and he uses a planting medium of fir bark, perlite and cinders. He used to add peat moss, but has found a less expensive substitute made from ground coconut husks.
Like many growers, Hiraishi uses Nutricote orchid fertilizer imported from Japan, but recommends it only on mature plants. "It can burn seedlings," he said. He avoids chemical fungicides or insecticides. He isolates and sometimes destroys diseased plants, but has little problems with insects or fungus.
He waters the 4-inch pots about once a week, or more often in dry weather, and the seedlings in smaller pots are watered daily. Hiraishi has thousands of orchid plants, and probably only half of them are growing on plant benches. The rest are in pots hanging from a chain link fence or in baskets hanging from pipes above the benches. He has developed a hook to hang the pots, and he'll be selling them, too, at the orchid show.
Hiraishi's last piece of advice is to new collectors of orchids. "Join an orchid society. They are all over the island, and the members are great people. They can teach you all you need to know, hands on things that you don't read in books. People are eager to share what they know, and they're good people."
Bloomin' fun
What: "A Galaxy of Orchids," The Windward Orchid Society's spring show
Gardening Calendar in Do It Electric!
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