Car fumes near orchids?
 

OK I know this is a stupid question but I have to ask. Someone told me that if you have your orchids near the street, road, interstate, etc. that the car fumes are good for them. That can't be true, right? Of course, the person cannot remember where they found that little tidbit! Any info on this? :waving :hello

I don't know, but I do know that I do my own acrylic nails inside my room, which is extremely fumey, and my orchids have never had an issue.

I mean, think of it this way: Do other plants by roadsides have any negative issues from being near car exhaust and so on? Do trees and shrubs and roses wilt near stalling cars?

I personally have never seen such a thing, and I therefore doubt that the car exhaust fumes would really harm the orchids.

Also think about this:
"Outside" is a huge place. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that it is a swimming pool sized place.
So, in the swimming pool of "outside," we pour a single cup of pee. Okay, gross, right? But eventually, that small cup of pee will spread through the pool to be so dilute it would be as though there were no pee at all.
Hop on in!

I hope that made sense.

What I am saying is that the atmosphere outside is so vast that the car exhaust fumes will dilute and dissipate over time. You're not growing your orchids in a bell jar full of car exhaust gas- you're growing them in the open, well-ventilated outside!

Logically speaking, they shouldn't have a problem.
This was all determined by my thought experiments, though, haha.

Edit: Many of our members are growing orchids with great success in Los Angeles, and I've been there and seen the cloud of smog at sunset from the Griffith Observatory!! I mean, it's hard to not be close to a road in LA, so if they can grow there, they should be fine in most places, right?
And dear fellow OB members in LA, this is meant with no offense to you or your awesome city!

Just remember if you are standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone in a crowded pool and they all the think the same about your pool analogy. No thanks, I won't hop in :rofl:

I wouldn't think that air pollution would be that great as a whole for plants. The carbon, maybe, but the rest? Not sure. I have heard that when planting in a city, one must be careful what types of trees are chosen as some do not fare well in air polluted areas. I am guessing the same goes for most plants.
Plants do a wonderful job of filtering out the pollutants in the air (some are better than others) but I am guessing that not everything they absorb is good for them. Some are probably more tolerant than others, however.

It'd be just like the waterpark south park episode...

Is it a hydrogen powered car? Then affirmative.

Most cars are now pretty innocuous but there is always a poorly tuned or oil burner car that drives by occassionally.

Plants on the sides of roads are carefully selected for their extreme tolerance of high pollution levels. It's a huge consideration when landscaping near roads as most plants will enter a slow decline.

I have seen dead/damaged plants at the exhaust level in the drive through.

I know it's not the same thing but my Phal suffered bud blast when a container of outboard fuel was stored near it. I would think that the tropical orchids in particular prefer clean air as they are often found in rainforests where the air is sweet.

Oh, I wasn't aware of that! I will have to read up on that, thanks for the new information!!

I was just giving my best guesses based on logic rather than stating facts. <3