VAOS is excited to announce that Tim Culbertson will present our next Zoom meeting. 
Wednesday, Oct.7th, 2020 7:00pm. Zoom open at 6:30 Presentation – Laelia purpurata, the Queen of the Cattleyas.
Tim Culbertson teaches middle school kids for a living, one of his passions has always been plants. “I 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 awarded and select clones of historic importance, of which my collection numbers nearly 3000. While I love finding old, rare stepping stones in paph breeding, I also do a little hybridizing of my own, and growing up my own babies is a blast. I am 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. I love meeting other people who like orchids too, and doing so often finds me traveling to shows, vendors, and peoples’ greenhouses to see the latest and greatest in new hybrids and to get the best orchid gossip. I like to be involved in plants as much as possible: in addition to Longwood, I’ve 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. In short, I really like plants.
For your meeting, I’ll be sharing a presentation on Laelia purpurata, the Queen of the Cattleyas. Although large, these spectacular cattleyas grow well outside in subtropical climates, and with their myriad colors and a relatively unique blooming time, these are great plants for every collection, extending the blooming times in the Cattleya Alliance through July. With more and more Laelia purpurata clones and seedlings coming in from Brazil, and large grexes being bred in the United States, these stately, magnificent plants have seen a resurgence in popularity of late, and with good reason! By the end of this presentation, you will have a new appreciation of the range of color forms of Laelia purpurata and its hybrids, as well as an appreciation of their beautiful flowers and ease-of-growth. In addition, I can provide blooming size seedling plants of Laelia purpurata and its hybrids.