Category Archives: Meetings

Topic: Florida Native Orchids

Speaker: Prem Subrahmanyam

Prem is a true Florida native, having been born and raised in the Tallahassee, Florida area, before moving to Orlando with his family in 2005. He’s been studying Florida’s native orchids for more than 30 years and is renowned for his presentations at native plant and orchid societies across the state.

He makes his living as a software engineer and is also a graphic designer and 3d computer animator. His free time is spent photographing native orchids, growing his own collection of (legally purchased) orchids, developing his orchid-related websites, and collecting fossils or geocaching.

Prem is an award-winning photographer and his works have appeared in various magazine publications, textbooks, educational displays, orchid society newsletters, and brochures. In October 2009, his article on Epidendrum magnoliae was published in Orchids – the Bulletin of the American Orchid Society. His photos were also used in the Illustrated Dictionary of Orchid Genera, Jay Pfahl’s Orchidspecies.com website as well as in PBS website content for their Nova series.

Prem will dazzle and inspire us with his beautiful photographs and hopefully share a few of his discoveries, although the exact locations usually remain a deep secret. Some of his earliest finds were located less than 15 minutes from his home. If we’re fortunate, Prem will bring some of his photographs and other orchid-related items for sale.

Thanh Nguyen is an owner-operator of Springwater Orchids (Melbourne, FL). He is an engineer by trade, but also has been collecting and growing orchids for over 30 years. His orchid business began in 2001, mainly selling on the internet but gradually moved to orchid shows in recent years.

Thanh loves orchid species. And although he grows and sells all orchids genera, his forte has always been the genus of Paphiopedilum. He collects fine plants; grows, sells, breeds, and enjoys sharing his experiences with his customers and colleagues. His passion in paphs is reflected in award winning plants and an on-going paphs breeding program using local lab work, and local growing environment. His goals are to bring the excellence of a paphs breeding program back to America and augment the enthusiasm of paphs growing by way of sharing his growing experience and educational programs via shows and society speeches. You will see this through his breeding program with a well thought out process to target various audiences; from easy growing/flowering plants to state of the art breeding catered to most difficult collectors’ interest, in parallel with the conservation of breeding species, improving color and shape, broadening their growing conditions to make growing paphs a joy, not an aggravation.     Thanh will have orchids for sale.  Give it a try, and buy a paph/orchid seedling!

Speaker: Alan Koch

Topic: Miniature Cattleyas in Warm Climates

Alan Koch owns and operates Gold Country Orchids where he specializes in miniature and compact Cattleya’s. Alan started growing orchids in 1969 with 3 Cymbidiums given to him by an aunt. While in
college, he became interested in other orchids and discovered many would grow outdoors in Southern California. He has moved five times as his orchid obsession has led to the need for more growing space. With the last move, he purchased 10 acres of land in Lincoln, California for his 300,000 orchids. He is recognized as an expert in the Brazilian Cattleya alliance and a trend setter in miniature Cattleya breeding.

Alan has been published in the Orchid Digest, and the American Orchid Society magazines. He has also been published in the proceedings of the World Orchid Conference. He is an internationally known speaker. He is a past member of the AOS Judging Committee, and the Research Committee, as well as an Accredited Judge and is Vice-chair and Training Coordinator for the California Sierra Nevada Judging Center. Alan also served two terms on the Orchid Digest Executive Committee and Board of Directors, and is one of the current directors, as well as a Trustee for the AOS.

Alan will have plants for sale.