Take a rhody trip

Rhododendrons hardly seem like an endangered plant in Western Washington. Come spring, our local gardens and nurseries look like Mexican piñata shops as rhodies bloom in shades of pink, red and purple.

But those colorful hybrids are only a small slice of the rhododendron world – many of which are becoming exceedingly rare in the wild.

Until last year the people behind the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way focused most of their conservation efforts on temperate species that grow in climates similar to the Pacific Northwest. That all changed in September of 2010 when the garden opened a 5,000-square-foot conservatory to house Vireya rhododendrons.

Inside the spacious glass structure, thousands of rhododendrons and their associated plant cousins are growing. The Rhododendron genus comprises over 900 species. Of that, the Vireya subgroup has 300 species. What sets them off from their kin are morphological differences and their tropical south-east Asia distribution.

But this conservatory is not a tropical greenhouse like Tacoma’s W.W. Seymour. On a recent visit you could see your breath inside the structure. There’s a reason for that, said RSBG executive director and curator Steve Hootman. “These aren’t jungle plants. They are mountain plants,” he said.

The building protects the plants from freezing while staying cold enough in the winter to encourage the plants to enter their winter dormant cycle and set buds for flowering. Using computers the building automatically adjusts heating, cooling, ventilation and humidity to mimic the plants natural mountain habitat. A thermal shield unfolds to keep heat in at night or reduce sunlight on hot days.

The centerpiece of the building is a rushing cascade of water crossed by a small footbridge. Several towering pinnacles of rock, many so big the building had to be built over them, punctuate the landscape. Tree ferns from Tasmania and Hawaii add more vertical structure.

Donor Fran Rutherford provided most of the cost of the $750,000 building and left an endowment for it in his will, Hootman said.

The conservatory is a place where your notion of what exactly a rhododendron is will be expanded – or just rendered useless. Inside the glass house a cluster of Rhododendron stenophyllum, a native of Borneo, look like little ferns. Nickle-sized apricot colored flowers adorn the delicate looking plants. Waist-high R. tuba, from New Guinea, sports long pink stemmed flowers that burst into white rosettes.

There’s more than just high-maintenance rhodies growing here. Stretching their roots casually among the rhododendrons is a group of evergreen blueberries. Don’t expect to see these sprinkled on your morning cereal. Delicate and otherworldly, these blueberry plants offer mind boggling floral displays. Hootman bends down to show off a newly discovered species in the Indian Himalayas, Agapetes miniata. Inflated flowers hang from branches looking like miniature red Chinese lanterns.

Most of the plants here are epiphytes – plants that grow in trees with little or no soil. Small epiphytes are marketed in the U.S. as “air plants” but the plants growing in the RSBG conservatory can be tree size. “Eventually, a lot of these will become way too large to live in here,” Hootman said.

The plants in the conservatory may not be tropical, per se, but they have the quirks and oddities of them. Scores of orchids sport intricate flowers that rise from pseudo bulbs – roots that look like green bananas stuck halfway in the ground.

Beyond the interesting floral and foliage displays there’s a serious mission going on here: the conservation of threatened flora. While endangered animals get the bulk of the world’s attention the planet is facing the imminent extinction of numerous plant species as well.

Hootman looks down to a specimen of Rhododendron taxifolium. The feathery plant with bell shaped flowers is found only on one mountain in the Philippines, he said – if at all. After the seeds for this particular specimen were collected, the mountain was logged.

Hootman travels the world to find and collect seeds from all manner of rare and endangered plants. He’s just returned from a trip to Papua New Guinea where he climbed a 13,500-foot mountain to scout for plants. “I could see the wholesale destruction,” he said. “Most of the forests on those mountain tops are gone.”

It’s becoming a common theme on his overseas trips. During a 2010 trip to China, “We drove for two days and didn’t see a single tree (in a previously forested area.)”

Whether your interest is botany or just some time out of the rain the conservatory offers a journey into a plant world seldom seen.

“We’ve had people come in and spend the whole day here,” Hootman said. Others just spend a few minutes, take photos and leave. The plants are labeled but interpretive signs would enrich the experience. They are coming, he said.

The conservatory is a work in progress. As new plants are collected they will replace some of the existing ones. “It’ll change constantly,” Hootman said. Even without swapping out the plants the look of the flora is constantly in flux. “There’s always something in bloom.”

Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541

craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com

This story was originally published January 4, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Take a rhody trip."