Orchids of Paradise

Abstract

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN The Italian explorer and navigator Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus, c.1451–1506) discovered the paradise during his fourth voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, when searching for a passage west to the Indian Ocean and the Orient. He had sailed from Cádiz (Spain) in May 1502, and after landing on the island of Martinique (Martinica), Santo Domingo and Jamaica, he eventually reached Central America, anchoring off the coast of Honduras at the end of July. Two weeks later his ships landed on the continental mainland, and from here they began exploring the coast to the south, arriving in Almirante Bay in Panama on October 16, 1502. During this cabotage navigation, on September 18, 1502 Colombo anchored off Quiribrí Island (later known as Isla Uvita) in front of what is now Limón, Costa Rica. Even though he apparently never actually came ashore, the natural beauty of the coast, its exuberant vegetation and the abundance of wildlife (and maybe the gold ornaments worn by local dignitaries), were material enough to convince him to baptize the newly discovered land as Costa Rica, the Coast of Plenty. On the shores of the island, one can still find plants of Brassavola nodosa, much as Columbus’s crew could have seen them five centuries ago.