BigBill said: Here is another beauty from today.

• Slipper Orchid (Paphiopedilum Latoya)
• Uploaded by BigBill

By being in charge today, I was not on a team so I do not know any of the particulars about these plants. But the FCC was the only flower awarded out of the eight pulled for judging.
This is a Paphiopedilum Latoya. It is a hybrid of Paph. Fanaticum and Paphiopedilum armeniacum. It comes out of the Parvisepalum group of Paphs.
Fanaticum is the large, balloon pouched pink or pink and green flower that you'll find a bit further back in this thread. Well if you take that hybrid and cross it with the yellow, balloon pouched species, you get Paph. Latoya!!
It certainly caught my eye as I walked through the exhibits and I figured that I would share it with all of you!!

Flower was about 4" wide held on a sturdy inflorescence. Bright, rich canary yellow featuring tiny red freckles. Notice the fine, red, tessellations on the petals. What a Sweetie!!

Paph. Latoya found and purchased. Just had to find it. I have no yellows

You'll love it Ted!

Bill, I am inspired by that photo of Paph. niveum. That was a lot of beauty packed into a fairly small area! I really love to see well grown plants with so many healthy growths -- specifically plant species/hybrids that I can grow under lights. Thank you for bringing us that plant & information.

My pleasure.

Okay you Orchidphiles, here are some images from today's judging.
This first plant is Bulbophyllum longiflorum.



This is a very pretty species. It came to the judging table with two inflorescences featuring 17 total flowers. It is pretty much an ivory flower marked with raspberry. If you look closely, you will find several, thin 'Doodaflatchies'. They are very slim, hair like, but present and visible. The lip is small but definitely a vibrant shade of purple!!
The umbel of flowers measured about 3 1/2" wide by 4 3/4" tall. Individual blooms were about 1/2" wide.

Next is a plant of Paphiopedilum Carolyn Butcher. This is a hybrid of Paph. Fanaticum x Paphiopedilum delenatii.



This hybrid reminds me not only of Fanaticum but Paph. Lynleigh Koopowitz as well.
Carolyn Butcher has 9 awards I think and most of those images show a much darker, shockingly pink flower! It's petals are heavily tessellated pink with very fine raspberry spotting. The background color is ivory white with raspberry markings. I like the dark raspberry markings on the staminode.

The second one is my favorite. There's just something so pleasing about its form.

Cute Bulbo! I like anything with doodaflatchies!

Yes, I agree, this Paph looks very pleasing to the eye, nice shape!

The last plant that I want to share is a hybrid called Paphiopedilum Payakka Kod Kod. It is a hybrid of Paph. thaianum x Paph. concolor.



Thaianum is a fairly newly discovered species of Paphiopedilum from the Brachypetalum group. It is therefore closely related to Paph. niveum, concolor, bellatulum.
The flowers are some of the smallest of the group, their petals can be somewhat square. They are typically ivory to creamy white with varying degrees of burgundy spots. Many have a bright green spot on the staminode.
The plant shown above came to the judging table yesterday but was looked at by the other team. Although it is charming and cute, the hybrid kind of further accentuated the species drawbacks or bad points, small size, rectangular petals instead of square, and the cute little green spot on the staminode turned yellowish.
Personally I have seen maybe 12 or 15 different thaianum hybrids, and unfortunately none have really excited me. Instead of improving what both parents bring to a cross, thaianum's bad points carry though to the progeny. You can kind of see the concolor shape coming through in the hybrid.
Concolor is a beautiful pale yellow to deeply yellow bloom with burgundy to red spots and speckles. Aside from the slightly larger flower, the resulting flower doesn't seem to be an improvement over either parent. Thaianum's generally range between 1.33 - 1.75" in size, certainly some of the smallest hybrid flowers around.

I don't think that this was awarded.

Still pretty! But, given a choice I would surely pick the Carolyn Butcher!

I almost let three of my fellow judges have a piece of my mind yesterday. But my cooler head quickly prevailed. I was a good boy.
(heck, I should have shot them!!! No no no, I can't say that.)
Here is what happened. I took this novelty Phalaenopsis to judging yesterday.







It took it because I thought it had a 95% chance of being awarded, high HCC or low AM.
It was the first plant looked at by the other team. When I glanced over, they had score sheets out. This means some one nominated it for a flower quality award. Here is where it went haywire. The next thing I knew, it's back on the entry table and no one is asking me for a clonal name. Then I thought what the "F" happened???!!!

We had a little extra time yesterday so all of the teams talked a little about the plants that they looked at. These three sphincters that looked at my plant said,
"Color was good"
"Spotting was consistent, as in similar on each flower"
BUT from the standpoint of form, they thought the dorsal sepal on each flower was either misaligned or off center.
Say what???!!
Look at those images friends, do you see that??? Dorsal look fine to me!!!

But her comes the money shot, the reason I should have smacked them each, so help me Hanna, one of them, who's name I won't mention, said that "this hybrid has been around since 2012 without any awards!" As if that had any merit. It doesn't matter at all. We can't add or deduct points for that. There is no place for that on the score sheet because it's STUPID.
If that was remotely true, nothing would ever get awarded. There is a first award to every hybrid. One has to break the ice. Some judges feel that this is awardable but I don't want to go crazy but I will score it as a low HCC. Kind of getting it on the record so to speak. But these three Potato Heads skipped that step.

Now can it get an award next year? Sure. But what if it dies? What if the flowers are worse? But awardable plant did not get awarded because three judges talked themselves out of it!

I WAS LIVID GOING HOME.
It would be looked at poorly if I tried to correct this injustice. AND please remember, three people on a team and since score sheets came out, somebody thought that it deserved an award. Otherwise no scores sheets would have appeared.
Made me disappointed in the system.

Do I have to teach everyone?????

Do I have to teach everyone?????

The reasoning actually sounds stupid!!
Bill, the short answer is YES! But, teaching them using your plant as an example probably is nor a good idea, for obvious reasons. Perhaps next time this problem comes up again with a different Orchid from another person, then one might hammer that point home?
I would be a bit disenchanted!

Why do clubs like that always get cliquey?

Wow, that really isn't right. It would be like not giving a World Championship to a racer who's been racing for eight years. "Nope! Sorry! You've been racing for eight years, so even if you won the Championship fair and square, you can't have it."

What a rotten system. And might I add, that is a very pretty orchid, worthy of an award in my eyes (which I know doesn't mean anything, considering I've never grown an orchid in my life, but that's just my two cents).

Ursula said:Why do clubs like that always get cliquey?

Yeah, that too. I don't know why, but cliques have always REALLY steamed my clams.

Well it is not so much of it being a clique, I think of it as rigid thinking. A few of the judges here are not free thinkers. It is kind of like doing everything by the book. No thinking outside the box.

I can understand that the hybrid has not been recognized as of yet. No awards. That is a point of information only. It has absolutely nothing to do with awarding something.
I am judging every time with different people, no set teams. That's as it should be. So I try to make my feelings known on things. Logically, correctly and I take a position and defend my opinion if needed. But this might be being timid. Maybe having ones opinion overruled.

But with three people scoring and say one gave it the lowest awardable score, say 75. And the others score it 73 and 72, well that averages 73.33 = no award. If the 75 was a little more forceful or convincing or the other two not as rigid in thinking that it is not awardable, when some body thinks it is, then maybe it gets awarded?

I feel that being a product of NYC and Florida, I bring a unique slant on judging. I have been exposed to more plants and more judgings then they have. I can be a fine line that I walk.

But I do feel very comfortable here. People really seem to listen to my opinion on plants. But I can only do so much.

But with them saying form is good, color and spotting is good, those are the biggest hurdles to overcome.

Now to counteract those 2 good things, the poorly aligned dorsal sepals, which I think are not that way, and no award for 10 years does not negate the good points. Especially when that second point about no awards to date is completely invalid or wrong.
They might not even have realized that they said it.

I am a 73 year old judge for 21 years possibly having seen and judged some 50,000 plants!
They could be a 68 year old judge for 8 years possibly having seen 7,500 plants. Who has the better experience??? I have judged with 150 different judges, them 30. Who has the upper hand?!?!?!

There is a reason I don't enter anything for judging at the moment - simply, the Cyms I am predominantly interested in are not the big, round, exhibition standards that are usually awarded here. Whilst the judging system does allow for species and F1/F2/F3 hybrids ("novelty" hybrids), there is a general disinterest in them from the majority of exhibition growers (although the buying public loves them). Plus I also collect older hybrids (plants with historical value/interest), which means they've already been surpassed by later plants and no judge would consider them for an award now (which I would agree with in most cases).

We love what we love because of a variety of reasons. Not everything needs to be judged, not everything needs to be awarded.
Over 80% of my love of orchids has to do with growing them, trying always to learn to grow everything as best as I can. I fine tune my culture, not to grow the best plants that anyone has ever seen, but to grow the best plants that I possibly can.

But about 15 years ago, I had moved away from the absolute craziness of the NY metro area. I retired at the same time and moved to the SW coast of Florida. There, unlike the east side, I was looking for a slower and calmer life. I did find it.
Without the rigors of work and always having some type of schedule to adhere to, I found myself with oodles of free time. I really got into the Naples Society and suddenly wanted to share my knowledge. I took a position on the Board and started the 'Orchid Doctor'. That's when my knowledge came flowing out of me. I found myself not only helpful but informative. I could present the information and answer the questions. From that point on it has just exploded. I did it with honesty and humor.

But I am still driven, and driven is just the right word to use here, driven to get some awards. I use it as the carrot on the string hanging from the stick. It seems to keep me going, improving. That's the other 20% for me.
And until the day that I get called home, I will never stop growing orchids. Never stop teaching. It is just my purpose now. My boys are fine young men, I have done my job there. They simply cause me no worry. There is nothing more that I can do.

Just trying to get as many plus marks on the right side of the ledger as I can. 😇

I am back from judging and I have three plants to share with the group.
This first one is an unregistered hybrid. It is something that I do not think we have seen or talked about before.
It is an Angulocaste hybrid. It is Lycaste Nobuo 'Starburst' x Anguloa clowesii.



The Lycaste parent was awarded a few times with open, somewhat star shaped flowers. It had golden segments and a clear yellow lip. They would be about 2 1/2" wide on wirey inflorescences. The Anguloa parent has big pseudobulbs, long plicate leaves and kind of tulip-like yellow flowers. The flowers are large and well displayed but somewhat closed or hard to enjoy. It has awards too to about 13 clones. One was breathtaking with 59 flowers and from the award images it looked more like a huge clump of flowering tulips, not orchids.
My team looked at this plant and we did not award it. The flowers were less numerous and much smaller then we would have imagined.
There were only 3 flowers.