Just read that some orchids can take up to 15 years to bloom from seed
I was flipping through an old botany textbook I picked up at a garage sale in Cincinnati last weekend, and that fact just jumped out at me. It made me think about all the instant-gratification stuff we have now, like buying a full-grown plant at a big box store. Back when I first got into plants, my grandpa would always talk about the slow work of growing things from seed, but I never knew it could be that long. It puts those fancy orchid shows in a whole new light... knowing someone might have been tending a plant for over a decade before it ever flowered. It's a crazy level of patience that feels pretty rare these days. I guess it makes you appreciate the timeline plants work on, not ours. Has anyone here actually tried to grow an orchid from seed, or know someone who has?