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Steinhardt Conservatory: Aquatic House and Orchid Collection
To the right of the Trail of Evolution is the Robert W. Wilson Aquatic House. It measures 81 feet by 31 feet.
Two pools are the centerpieces of the house. The large, shallow pool features a variety of tropical and subtropical aquatic plants from around the world displayed in a naturalistic swamp environment. Its emphasis is on demonstrating the range of physical adaptations plants have made to live in, on, and near water. Plants include mangroves, papyrus, water hyacinth, numerous aroids, and the giant Victoria water platter.
The deep pool, or paludarium, displays many other plants of aquatic and wet environments. Treeferns, mosses, orchids, and an epiphyte tree stand above exposed rockwork, while waterfalls cascade into the six-foot-deep pool. Plants growing in and around the pool highlight the diversity of the world's submerged and emergent flora. Visitors can view these plants from above or from windows situated at the base of the pool.
In addition to the pools, two special plant cases are built into the east wall of the house. One case features a display of insectivorous plants, including pitcher plants and venus fly-traps. The other houses rotating displays from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's extensive orchid collection (see "The Orchid Collection").
Hanging from racks around the perimeter of the Aquatic House are numerous orchids, staghorn ferns, and other epiphytes.
The Orchid Collection
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a long history of cultivating orchids. Indeed, the Garden's seventh plant accession was a native ladyslipper, Cypripedium acaule. The main growth and organization of the orchid collection occurred from the 1950s through the 1970s under the guidance of Dr. Carl Withner. His teaching, writing, and expansion of the collection brought the Garden's orchid reputation to national prominence.
In 1999, BBG received a generous donation of approximately 800 orchids from the private collection of widely respected orchid growers and hybridizers Dr. Benjamin Berliner and Esther Ann Berliner. The Berliners' gift consisted of an encyclopedic range of unusual and important species as well as many high quality hybrids in a variety of different genera—many of them American Orchid Society award winners.
PHOTOS: Helena Fierlinger
The BBG orchid collection now consists of some 2200 plants, distributed through 240 genera and representing about 980 species from around the world. Our holdings are particularly strong in the Cattleya and Lycaste alliances, as well as in Oncidium, Encyclia, Schombergkia, and Dendrobium species. There are over 25 cultivars of Laelia anceps and more than a dozen each of Laelia purpurata and Cattleya skinneri.
Our collection is kept within the Steinhardt Conservatory complex in a climate-controlled greenhouse specifically devoted to orchid cultivation. As plants bloom, they are rotated into a display case in the Robert W. Wilson Aquatic House. Also in this house, visitors can see more than 100 Vanda alliance plants blooming throughout the year, species orchids naturalized in the displays, and the Garden's giant specimen of Grammatophyllum speciosum, the species considered to be the largest orchid in the world.
Map of the Garden
The Steinhardt Conservatory is indicated by the orange box. Click on the map to visit other locations in the Garden, or click here to view a larger map.
