Orchid champ waits in suspense

The World Orchid Conference is Wednesday, but Bob Fuchs' crown jewel doesn't care.

HOMESTEAD - The berry-colored buds looked ready to burst. Bob Fuchs tried peeling open the petals, but the hybrid orchid tightly refused to be coaxed into bloom.

Fuchs had hung the vanda Robert's delight "crownfox big red" just inside the door of a 90-degree greenhouse. He hoped the added heat and humidity would force one of the crown jewels of his orchid collection to flower for this week's World Orchid Conference, the event that established him as orchid royalty more than 20 years ago. Miami hosts the five-day conference this year, starting Wednesday.

A third-generation South Florida orchid grower, Fuchs (pronounced FYOOKS) has registered more than 700 hybrid orchids, but this vanda is the only one he's named after himself. The orchid went on to win the equivalent of "best in breed" at the 2002 World Orchid Conference, an event that every three years features exhibits, seminars and prizes for orchid enthusiasts worldwide.

Fuchs won the grand champion prize for the best orchid in the world at the 1984 conference with another hybrid with round, fuschia flowers and a netting pattern on the petals. It encouraged him to stop teaching junior high art classes and make the family passion for orchids a full-time business.

The virgin hammock his grandfather bought to nurture a collection of native Florida orchids is now the 40-acre Fuchs Hammock Preserve in Miami-Dade County. Fuchs began rebuilding his grandfather's original 10-acre nursery in Homestead in 1970. Fuchs, 61, is now recognized as an expert in vandas and hybridization - crossing two compatible orchid species to produce a new flower.

In the heated greenhouse, staring at a plant that wouldn't flower for another week, Fuchs said this is most exciting time: the waiting to see what will bloom after two species have been crossbred.

Hybrid orchids in nature are rare. Some regard only naturally growing species to be true orchids, but Fuchs doesn't agree.

"Through hybridization, by crossing flowers together, you have something new and exciting happening," Fuchs said. "If you stop making hybrids, we won't have anything new."

[Last modified January 21, 2008, 23:03:51]