VietNamNet – Vietnamese orchid collector Tran Tuan Anh has been dubbed  “The king of the orchid”. Dendrobium tuananhii, a species of orchid recognised by Russian and American academies, is named after him.

Tuan Anh is keen to share his experience with orchid enthusiasts.

“Kings collect orchids, mandarins taste tea”. In the old days, the orchid was a highly bred flower variety that only a chosen few had access. Nowadays, it is quite popular in Vietnam. One can see vendors with orchid baskets on Hanoi’s streets.

For Tuan Anh, it has been over 20 years since he saw his first orchid; he holds fast to the wish that one day he could see baskets of orchids on balconies all over Hanoi. That wish has urged him to become an orchid collector, an orchid lover and an orchid trader.

Calling on Tuan Anh’s orchid garden – Ngoc Lan Vien - one is amazed at the thousands of orchid baskets of over 300 varieties amassed by Tuan Anh over the past several decades.

Multi-coloured and multi-form baskets of orchids are hung everywhere on frames and pillars making an orchid kingdom or a “Hanging Garden of Babylon”. Among them are the rare ones, which are worth several thousands of US dollars.

However, for Tuan Anh, the most valuable orchid basket contains lan kiem (cymbidium), a very normal variety of orchid, which is worth only several dollars. This basket is priceless for him as it represents the first collection of orchids that got him started with the hobby of orchid collection and research.

It is by chance that Tuan Anh has this first basket of orchids, lan kiem. He went to the Hoang Thach Cement Factory with his uncle and found this basket of lan kiem there. The flowers still exist there to this day.

Over years of military in the north western region, Tuan Anh collected many varieties of beautiful orchids and sent them to his family. Returning from military service, he considered those baskets as representative of the vicissitude of emotions he had been through.

As the years went by, the orchid became an integral part of Tuan Anh’s life.

Sharing  the passion

Visiting Ngoc Lan Vien in a long, narrow alley in Hanoi are orchid lovers from every corner of Vietnam as well as from other countries. The garden is always crowded with orchid enthusiasts. Tuan Anh doesn’t want to leave his garden but sometimes he is ready to leave the capital for forest together with others who share the same passion.

In 2002, looking for new varieties of orchids, he partnered with a German enthusiast, who also has an orchid named after him. The German engineer arrived in the early morning and they left Hanoi for the northern mountainous province of Thai Nguyen in the afternoon.

The two men were lost in the wild forest but they were lucky to see and photograph many kinds of orchids. Tuan Anh was surprised at seeing his German counterpart praying over every basket of new orchids that they found. However, they did not find the elusive orchid that the German collector wanted to see.

Another time he also went to the forest with another German collector and they had to spend one night at Vo Nhai District’s police station because the foreign collector forgot to bring his passport. On many trips into the forest to look for new varieties of orchids, Tuan Anh has returned home empty handed. However, rare kinds of orchids come to him by chance.

In 2001, he unexpectedly discovered a strange kind of orchid in a pile of orchids sold by a farmer from the northern mountainous province of Son La.

With the experience of a person who has researched and collected orchids for over 20 years, Tuan Anh was able to define this new, rare and beautiful species of orchid. It blossoms through the spring with flowers running from the top to the bottom of the plant. The flowers are medium size with a pink violet colour.

After a period of research, he was surprised to discover that this was a totally new species of orchid in the world. He immediately sent the sample and specimen to the Russian and American academies for gene and variety testing. In 2003 the novel orchid was recognised by academies and it is now named after Tuan Anh.

Tuan Anh’s orchid is the latest species discovered in the world at present. It is also considered as one of the rarest and the most beautiful orchid varieties in the world, since it has all factors that are attractive for orchid collectors: easy to grow, flowers live for a long time, wonderful fragrance, flowers blossom from the top to the bottom of the plant, the base of the plant is small, and the flowers are pink-violet colour.

In the Orchid magazine, February 2004 issue, Russian academic Leonid Averyanov wrote “The Dendrobium tuananhii adds to the collection of diverse Vietnamese orchids. This kind of orchid, found by Tuan Anh in the northern mountainous province of Lai Chau, has been recognised and named after him.”

The orchid garden of Tuan Anh is considered the biggest in Hanoi. Apart from some rare species of orchids imported from other countries, most orchid baskets here are found in Vietnam. Tuan Anh has also exchanged orchids with collectors in Thailand, China, and Japan.

“Many people think that China and Thailand are the cradles of orchid growing, but based on the diversity of species of orchids in Vietnam, we can say that Vietnam itself is the cradle of orchid growing in the world,” he said.

A fine life with orchids

Tuan Anh looks younger than his age at 39. He receives many guests to his orchid garden and freely provides horticultural advices for his visitors.

He knew that to see beautiful orchid flowers, one needs patience. He has failed many times in growing orchids because of a lack of experience. Some of his orchids were fresh and beautiful when he bought them but they dried up and died despite his care. Tuan Anh has tried many kinds of growing as well as various types of care. Finally, success has come after many failures for the delicate flower.

Over a decade ago, the number of orchid collectors could be counted on one hand; those who knew about this kind of flower were few. Known as one who had a special passion for orchids, many people who owned valuable orchids but did not know their value often sought advice from Tuan Anh to sell their orchids. In the beginning, even Tuan Anh did not know the real value of some baskets of orchids, which he bought for only several dollars, later selling them for nearly a hundred.

Tuan Anh lives and breathes orchids. He collects documents featuring orchids. He now has a library with a large number of books, magazines, and documents about this kind of trees at his home. He once spent US$230 to buy an orchid book.

He can currently be proud to say that he never mistakes a variety of orchids. Some people have tried to deceive him but have never been swindled. Once, a man brought a Hai Van orchid from the south and told Tuan Anh that it was the Vietnam Alba orchid – an extremely valuable kind. But he immediately recognised the real value of this orchid.

He said that for each kind of orchid in each climate and garden, each collector should learn his own experience. He himself has found one kind of fertiliser that is very suitable for orchids. That is ostrich feces imported from Australia.

According to Tuan Anh, oriental people have a passion for orchids with fragrance, small and elegant flowers and leaves while the western people love orchids with big and colourful flowers without attention to fragrance.

Collecting orchids is both a hobby and good business. If one is active and patient to harmoniously combine those factors, he can both nurture his passions while having a good life with orchids, he said.

So far, as the world has recognised one variety of orchids named Tuan Anh, he still continues to find other new species of orchids since he believes that there are two other types of orchid indigenous to Vietnam. If they are recognised, Tuan Anh hopes that they will be named with popular names of Vietnam. He assured us that Vietnam has up 720 species of orchids, not the 678 that scientists have announced.

There are many people who have a passion for orchids and are ready to spend hundreds of millions of dong to collect orchids. Tuan Anh is designing a website and compiling a book on Vietnamese orchids to introduce to domestic and foreign orchid lovers. The king of orchids also dreams about a preservation zone for Vietnamese orchids.

Tuan Anh’s orchid garden is located in Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi.

Website: http://www.ngoclan-orchid.com.

Story and photos by Bui Dung.