Sarasota Orchid Society holding 61st annual event at Municipal Auditorium

SARASOTA — Just when the skin-cracking chill and bland Florida winter weather are coming to an end, it’s time to share the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium with some orchids.

The Sarasota Orchid Society’s 61st annual orchid show and sale returns to the Municipal Auditorium this weekend with this year’s theme of “For the Love of Orchids.”

The two-day event, which runs through Sunday, features hundreds of orchids from Sarasota, Venice, Englewood and Manatee orchid societies. The event also includes informational talks and vendors selling orchids and orchid products.

On Saturday, customers were wandering among a few hundred colorful orchid blooms varying wildly in sizes and sensuous shapes.

They clutched orchids, some wrapped in plastic bags, others in small pots. For some it took 10 minutes to find the right orchid; for others, it took nearly two hours of burrowing through a bin of unbloomed orchids to find the perfect fit.

The auditorium was filled with orchid lovers of various degrees. There were professionals and hobbyists. And some just came to buy orchid-related items like books, art and collectibles.

Raising orchids from seed, as serious growers do, takes patience. Most species take five to seven years to flower.

“Once you get hooked,” said Roy Krueger, vice president of the Sarasota Orchid Society, “it’s an obsession that’s very hard to articulate.”

For many orchid aficionados, it’s about the challenge. It's about expanding the comfort zone. It's about challenging yourself to grow something beautiful.

Krueger’s passion for orchids began 15 years ago when he moved to Parrish from Ohio. After inheriting three orchids from the previous owner of his home, he was hooked. Now he leads workshops on orchid care.

“I came down here to play golf. But I inherited three orchids and I think I played golf a half a dozen times since I came down,” he said.

Krueger’s fascination is shared by nearly 200 other Sarasota Orchid Society members who gather monthly to discuss cultivation, education and appreciation of flowers.

Because Sarasota’s tropical climate is ideal for growing orchids, there are plenty of local enthusiasts and the interests continues to snowball.

“To me, orchids are such beautiful flowers,” said Dennis Pavlock, the president of the SOS, who became interested in orchids in 2005. “There are over 25,000 orchid species, with new species being discovered regularly. Plus, there are almost 200,000 hybrid orchids — this is man taking the species that already exist and creating new orchids.”

In addition to the annual show and sale in January at the Municipal Auditorium, which is the major fundraising event of the year, a high priority for the organization is yearly scholarship awards. The Sarasota Orchid Society gives one-year scholarships of $1,000 to one or more high school seniors or college students from Sarasota or Manatee counties.

Orchid aficionados can be over the top, pursuing the rarer species “like lovers,” as Susan Orlean wrote in “The Orchid Thief.”

More than 30,000 different species flower in the wild, on every continent except Antarctica. They range from the achingly beautiful to the truly weird, and orchid lovers want them all.

“You cannot stop,” said Leone Levy, who began collecting orchids nearly 30 years ago. “It’s like a drug. It’s a challenge and a passion.”