The Epric Foundation

The EPIPHYTIC PLANT RESEARCH AND INFORMATION CENTRE (EPRIC) Foundation was founded March 1997 and has the following goals:

1. To maintain the natural habitats of epiphytic plants such as epiphytic cacti and epiphytic succulents, bromeliads, tillandsia's, hoyas, orchids, etc and the flora which grows together with these epiphytic plants such as tropical ferns.
2. To give information to the public about epiphytic plants such as information about culture, rooting, societies, growers, books etc.
3. To maintain a generic reserve collection of all epiphytic plants and also of their hybrids so that old cultivars will not get lost.
4. To help with publications about epiphytic plants.
5. To provide a secure place for people who have a long distance to the regular jobmarket.

We have already done quite a lot towards these aims. We are building up a generic reserve collection. We have started with epiphytic cacti and their hybrids. We are collecting in general all species of all the different epiphytic plants including the hybrids. Then we have started with the orchid family. We try to grow a lot of our plants ourselve. Mostly we have then to much plants from one kind of orchid and these are going into our sale room.

We have spent a large effort on our research projects. We still run several projects such as the Easter and Schlumbergera hybrid project. To make it possible to acquire cuttings the Royal Prince Bernard Carnation Foundation gave us a donation for Schlumbergera cuttings and named these plants as a 'cultural heritage'. We also started a project called 'The history of Phalaenopsis culture'. We try to find as much as possible old forgotten hybrids and documentate that.

We also give advice to people about the cultivation about their epiphytic plants. Thus, the internet is a really useful resource for us as it is faster, more convinient, and removes the waiting period regular mail creates. At shows we do give a lot of information on culture, especially about orchids.

We are against plant collecting in the wild because most of the material will be lost after several years in normal greenhouses. We are making an inventory of all available plants in cultivation and try to have them here in our collection. Also rare species will be grown on this route. Some of these species are already available for the public (Rhipsalis ewaldiana; Rhipsalis baccifera subsp. fordauphinensis) Others will be soon available as Schlumbergera orssichiana, Epiphyllum guatemalensis monstrosa & Loebeira macdougallii (Appendix 1 plant). Our interest is to let people start with all the epiphytes

Because all this work is voluntary, we have a lot to do every day. Our board members are working several days in the greenhouses, as our volunteers will help you out with questions, sale, and post. Running an institute such as the EPRIC Foundation is a lot of exciting and very pleasant work.

Contact address: Stichting Epric, Postbus 7060, 6503 GN, Nijmegen, Nederland. epric@telfort.nl