Biotopes

The various orchid species prefer many different biotopes: different types of soil, different sun exposition, different moisture in the ground, different plant sociologies. This stack gives a tutorial about the perhaps most wonderful form of creative sourcery: Changing your surroundings, so that orchids with their special ecologic needs can survive there.

Many orchids are opportunists, they appear after a few years in suitable biotopes and can endure many years until other vegetation overgrows them. In the nature, open spots which are created by wind and fire are ideal biotopes for the meadow orchids until the forest reclaims them. Dark forests and wet swamps are specialized biotopes which are inhabited by specialized orchids.

Humans have unintentionally created many biotopes for orchids in the last centuries and they have destroyed them again with intensive agriculture. Humans can also have the power to restore intact orchid biotopes again for a long time to come.