In 2012 Bryan Naqqi Manco (DEMA) together with a team from the Turks & Caicos Islands Environmental Club and under the Department of Environment & Maritime Affairs under the “Rescue & Collection of Endangered & Endemic Plants” Project, rescued several very special orchids from the path of development and bulldozers on North Caicos.
All five of TCI’s native Encyclia orchids were planted in the Museum Botanical Garden and have flourished despite their early rough start (to read more about their rescue read Orchid Survivors in our blogs). This spring one of these tough, beautiful orchids, the Roufus Encyclia, sometimes called the Butterfly Orchid, is putting on a show. This orchid is found throughout the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos Islands. It normally blooms red-brown (rufous colored) but here it usually blooms yellow or green.
Young bloom, still very green.
Encyclia Rufa “fruits” are delicate looking, but tough.
The plant has long graceful leaves and grows in a “clump.”
The blooms are on long stems, up to 90 cm long, and can have more than a dozen flowers that may redden with age.
Our very own orchid in full bloom in the Museum Garden. Photo by Bryan Naqqi Manco
Please do come by, see and smell this extraordinary Museum’s living collection every December to April; other species of orchids will flower at different times of the year.
