Great Britain: 23-year-old Dino Zelenika from Mostar is a leading orchid expert

Dino Zelenika from Mostar bought a flower 14 years ago when he was leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would change his life, writes westerndailypress.co.uk, reported by BH News Agency Patria.

Namely, he took an orchid with him then, and today, 23-year-old Zelenika is a leading international authority on orchids. Tomorrow in Johannesburg, he will be one of the judges, as well as a speaker and exhibitor at the World Orchid Conference after five years of specialization.

When he came to England, Zelenika started growing orchids on his windowsill, but it wasn't very successful at first. He perfected plant cultivation before all the windowsill sills were covered with orchids. At the age of 12, he was already asking his mother to enroll him in the Bristol West Orchid Society. The members of the Orchid Society were left "open-mouthed," Zelenika states, when they realized that the 12-year-old boy was their new member.

His mentor was Ian Parsons, who has been growing orchids for 40 years, and he gifted Dino a greenhouse for cultivation, which he still uses today.

- It heats and moistens the soil and provides a perfect environment for growing plants - says Zelenika.

At 17, he won a competition, and a year later, he began studying wild orchids in Bosnia and Herzegovina that attract attention in Great Britain.

- For a while, my friends thought my passion was strange, but now they all think it's great, and as they get older, I think they appreciate beautiful gardens and plants more - says Zelenika.

Over the past years, he has traveled the world, and in 2011, he was in Singapore at the World Orchid Conference. After returning from Johannesburg, he will go to Laos, where he will work on educating people about the cultivation and conservation of orchids.

- What people see packaged in supermarkets is just the tip of the iceberg. My favorite orchid is Cattleya from South America - states Zelenika.

Zelenika mentioned that there are 25,000 species of orchids, but only about 2,000 of them are beautiful. Some are very small, while some, like Grammatophyllum in East Asia, can weigh several tons and grow over two meters tall.