Stanhopea: Chocolate Vision 'Solid Pleasure'

How one bloom led an orchid hobbyist to grow a thousand plants.
By Susan Wiedmann Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
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San Jose, Calif. - Imagine fragrant six-inch orchid blooms resembling colorful birds in flight or space aliens with open jaws.
In the 1980s, orchid hobbyist Douglas Pulley became so captivated by the dramatic appearance of these exotic Stanhopea orchids that he began hybridizing them, a painstaking procedure. Because of his skill in choosing compatible parents for his hybrids, Dr. Pulley, an ophthalmologist, remains the world's most successful Stanhopea breeder and is also a hybridizer of scores of more than 200 other orchids.