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Published: September 03, 2008
BY AMY CONDRA

Twenty years ago, Art Chadwick was working as an electrical engineer.

He spent his days in a cubicle, under the harsh fluorescent lights of his office. And he kept suiting up and showing up, until one day he longed for a window with a view.

He thought of his childhood, of a house filled with his father’s beloved orchids.

“I called and asked, ‘Dad, tell me about those orchids again!’” he said recently, describing his decision to flee the corporate world for the greener pastures of horticulture.

Chadwick’s father is A.A. Chadwick, and he has plenty to say about a flower that many consider exotic and enticing. The elder Chadwick, a resident of Delaware, has been cultivating, studying and nurturing orchids since 1945.

His passion is the cattleya orchid, a species he has written prolifically and authoritatively on for “Orchids,” the journal of the American Orchid Society.

And in 1989, Art Jr. founded Chadwick & Son Orchids in Powhatan, where cattleyas are among the various orchid species that thrive in Chadwick’s 10 greenhouses, and occasionally find their way to the company’s retail store in Richmond’s museum district.

Chadwick has developed his own reputation as an expert orchid grower. On Sept. 29, Chadwick will be discussing “Large Flowered Cattleya Species” at the Western Australian Orchid Spectacular and Conference in Perth, Australia.

What is about the cattleya that continues to fascinate the Chadwicks, who have even coauthored a book on the subject?

“It’s my father’s baby,” laughed Chadwick.

So much so that in the preface to “The Classic Cattleyas,” Art and his father write that the book is “a tribute to that grande dame, that queen of the orchid world, that classic orchid whose bright lavender color became known as ‘orchid color’ and whose image was the public perception of what an orchid really looked like.”

The cattleyas were discovered in Brazil in 1817, and arrived in Europe in 1818. Over the years the species, hailed for its magnificent blooms, achieved popularity among first the British, then the European, aristocracy.

By the 20th century, the cattleya’s large blooms were being imported to the United States at such an affordable cost that, rather than being a luxury solely of the noble class, they were suddenly an easily obtained fashion statement.

“Some trendsetter pinned one to her dress and wore it to a dance,” said Chadwick of the corsage craze that endured for decades. “Suddenly this was the rage to do, from the 1930s until the 60s, when it died down.”

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was frequently photographed wearing a corsage of cattleya flowers, and in 1953 an enterprising business named a cattleya after her. Like corsages, the trend of naming orchids for first ladies caught on—Jacqueline Kennedy, Bess Truman and Patricia Nixon were similarly honored.

Chadwick has resurrected this tradition, naming hybrids for first ladies such as Barbara Bush, Hilary Clinton and Laura Bush.

“I got to present Hilary Clinton’s orchid to her at the White House,” said Chadwick.  This flower was noted in Susan Orlean’s bestseller, “The Orchid Thief:” “Chadwick & Son, a Virginia nursery, recently registered a hybrid named Hilary Rodham Clinton ‘First Lady.’”

“When you hybridize an orchid, if the plants have never been put together before, you can name it anything you want to,” explained Chadwick. “You submit the name to the Royal Horticulture Society, and they accept or reject it!”

Other famous people that have inspired the names of Chadwick’s hybrids include Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth and Tipper Gore. And, after naming a hybrid after Martha Stewart, Chadwick and his father were invited to appear on the celebrity’s television show.

“It’s a fun thing to do,” said Chadwick. “When else do you get to hang out with these celebrity women?”

Chadwick is working on new hybrids right now, but won’t disclose who the next recipients might be.  “They take seven years to bloom. You cross the plants, and then try not to reveal who the next celebrity is!”

Chadwick says that despite the cattleyas former glory as corsages, today their popularity has diminished.

“The flowers don’t last long,” he said. “Only three weeks on average.”

But for those three weeks, the cattleya’s blooms, as botanist John Lindley wrote in 1836, “stand forth with an equal radiance of splendour and beauty.”

Photo by Skip Rowland
This cattleya hybrid, named L.c Powhatan, was created by Chadwick’s father,  A.A. Chadwick, 30 years ago.

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