Join us for our June Meeting featuring a presentation on Masdevallia by Tim Culbertson!
Meeting Date: Wednesday, June 11th at the Farmington Senior Center. Doors open at 6:30pm for socializing and the general body meeting starts at 7pm.
Where: The Farmington Senior Center
321 New Britain Ave, Unionville, CT 06085
Event: Masdevallias by Tim Culbertson
Our speaker this month will be Tim Culbertson, one of his 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 awarded and select clones of historic importance, of which his collection numbers nearly
3000. He currently manage the paphs at Sunset Valley Orchids, and does hybridizing in a wide range of genera. He is an accredited judge with the American Orchid Society, and has 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 doing so often finds him 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’s 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, he really likes plants.
For the meeting, he will be sharing a presentation entitled “Masdevallias You Can Actually Grow.” It’s been such a pity that these absolute gems trace most of their heritage to cold-growing, cloud forest species. Some modern hybridizers are pushing back on those temperature requirements to make new Masdevallia hybrids which are compact, floriferous, colorful, and that grow and bloom in normal intermediate conditions in mixed collections. These plants are easy to grow and flower, are vigorous, and have low demands on light and fertilizer, and as such are wonderful plants! He will help to identify important species in the backgrounds of historically important and modern Masdevallias, as well as
discuss the different directions of breeding warmth tolerance. 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.
There will be a show table, so don’t forget to bring along your blooming plants for the show table. It’s always exciting to see what’s coming into bloom, looking forward to an awesome show table!