THIS IS AN IN-PERSON MEETING AT TOUCAN TERRACE

The April society meeting will be an in person meeting with Tim Culbertson. We will be meeting at Toucan Terrace for a pot luck lunch, sílent auction and orchid show and tell followed by an informative talk on Pescatorias.

Please bring all food to share by 11:30 so we can begin the meeting at noon.

At the meeting Tim be sharing a presentation entitled “Amazing Soft-Leaved Orchids”. These plants are easy to grow and flower, are vigorous, and have low cultural demands beyond the needs for heat and water. Genera in this group, including Pescatorea, Cochleanthes, Bollea, and Huntleya, are under-represented in collections of mixed genera; their beautiful (and often blue) flower colors argue favorably for their inclusion, as does their tendency to produce specimen plants quickly when grown well. By the end of this presentation, you will have a new appreciation of what goes into breeding trends for these types of plants, as well as an appreciation of their beautiful flowers and ease-of-growth. Ihope this talk will encourage you to try one in your collection.

Bio : One of Tim's passions has always been plants. He began growing orchids as an offshoot from working at Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia just after college. From the very beginning it was all about Paphs, particularly awardedand select clones of historic importance, of which my collection numbers nearly 3000. He currently manage the paphs at Sunset Valley Orchids, and do hybridizing in a wide range of genera. He is an accredited judge with the American Orchid Society, and have served in various capacities with various orchid societies in California and on the East Coast. He loves meeting other people who like orchids too, and finds himself traveling to shows, vendors, and peoples’ greenhouses to see the latest and greatest in new hybrids and to get the best orchid gossip. He likes to be involved in plants as much as possible: in addition to Longwood, He has worked at the Smithsonian Institution tending to their orchids, and for years for the United States National Arboretum, collecting rare plants and documenting cultivated species and hybrids for their herbarium.