Missouri Botanical Garden Orchid Show 2007

Voice: Andrew Colligan, archivist and historian Resources: Public Relations fact sheet, Bulletin articles, Kemper Center handout I’m Andrew Colligan, the Garden’s archivist and historian. The Missouri Botanical Garden has collected, grown and displayed orchids for more than a century. The first specimens were given as a gift to the Garden’s founder, Henry Shaw, in 1876. Mr. Shaw was especially fond of orchids. At his death in 1889, the Garden’s collection, though small at the time, was one of the country’s most complete. The collection grew steadily, and in 1918, the largest public display of orchids ever held in St. Louis made it’s debuted at a Christmas Show. In 1923, George Pring, an orchidologist on the Garden staff, spent six months collecting plants in Panama and Colombia. He returned with eight tons of orchids, including 5,000 Cattleyas. The Garden held its first orchid show the following year, in 1924. Eight-thousand visitors came! In 1926, the Garden set up a tropical field station in Panama and