My First Orchid Conference

I went to my first orchid conference a couple weeks ago.  It was at the Great Lakes Judging Center in Ann Arbor, MI.  I was fortunate enough to go with my good friend, and my orchid enabler, Linda.  The coolest thing about the conference was that most of the presentations were well above what I know so there was a lot of learning to sponge up.  Most of the presentations were geared towards accredited American Orchid Society judges who already have years, if not decades, of growing experience and who already know what most of the orchid species already look like.  I was approached by 3 different people who thought I should go through the program and get accredited.  Hmmm, a 6 year commitment and gone at least once a month to judge an orchid show ... would be pretty cool, but it'll have to wait until Kai is older.

So the topics of the conference were "Cymbidiums and Pleuthallids."  My previous blog post showcases one of these:  Pleurothallis tribuloides.  Pleuthallids can be generally classified as really small plants and usually small, unusual-looking flowers; hence the reason I like them.  :)  Cymbidiums are probably on the other end of the spectrum.   Usually really large plants with lots of beautiful flowers.  The flowers are commonly used in corsages, as well.  Here is a nice one grown by one of the speakers at the conference.

There were two speakers who traveled from California and both were absolutely phenomenal! The first of them to speak was Joe Parker who is president of The Pleurothallid Alliance and he spoke on a species of orchids called "Dracula."  I found out that Dracula orchids were not named for the vampire Dracula, but rather is name that means "little dragon."  Joe grows Dracula orchids exclusively in his greenhouse and said one of the reasons for his talk was to persuade others to start growing them as well. Well, he picked up a recruit with me.  If you look at the Wikipedia link I posted above and look for the "frog's skin" dracula photo on that page, that is the one that came home with me.

The second California speaker was George Hatfield of Hatfield Orchids who grows and hybridizes Cymbidiums exclusively.  He is responsible for tons of the Cymbidiums we see in cultivation now.  I'm going to gush here a little bit, but this man is seriously an incredible asset to the orchid community as a whole.  I was in awe of what he brought to his presentations and also on his philosophy on growing and judging orchids.  Even though I was probably the only person in that room that he didn't know, he still stopped and took 15 minutes to talk to me and help me pick out a Cymbidium to grow.

Another really interesting presentation was given by Mario Ferrusi and he talked about judging Masdevallia orchids.  He offered up the single most important thing that I took from the conference.  It is probably something I've always known, but never really put in to practice.  When you water your orchids spend at least 15 seconds with the hose at each and every plant.  He said the two most beneficial things that come from it is that, aside from giving them a really good drink of water, is that you flush away any salts that have accumulated within the potting media, say from fertilizers, and also that you bring a lot of oxygenated water to the roots when you spray it through the potting media.  Since orchids are epiphytic in nature, and require air and moisture to their roots, this satisfies both needs.  Good stuff.

So, for the only bad thing about the trip, and this doesn't have anything to do with the conference, but rather the lodging we had.  We stayed at the Red Roof Inn and were incredibly lucky that Linda reserved rooms months ago.  The same weekend as the conference was the same weekend of a big Nascar race at the Michigan International Speedway.  We talked the the lady checking us in and she said that hotels were booked up from Jackson to Detroit and down in to Ohio.  I forget how many tens of thousands of people she said go to the race, but it was obscene.   Anyway, probably 99% of the people staying there were there for the race, and the group that was staying in the room next to me were so excited that they partied until 5:00am that morning.  Ugh.  So I was working off of 2 hours of sleep the next day which made for a long drive back.

So except for the one glitch I had an absolute blast at the conference.  I hope next year is as interesting as this one and hopefully I can go again.