April 2025 - Arnold Gum ‘A Photo Tour of the Orchids and Lessons Learned from a Trip to Cali, Colombia and a Local Orchid Show'

                    Arnold Gum

 We are delighted to welcome back one of our favorite speakers, Arnold Gum, who will take us through photo highlights and the lessons he learned from a whirlwind tour of five different biomes surrounding Cali, Colombia and the Asociacion Vallecaucana de Orquideologia Show he attended.

  Arnie’s trip involved an exploration of Lake, Mid-altitude, high altitude cloud forest and Pacific Slope Biomes in areas surrounding Cali, Colombia with an eye to understanding how and where orchids grow in the wild (In situ) and lessons pertinent to keeping these surprisingly durable orchids alive in our collections. He saw over 100 orchids in bloom with his excellent orchid guide, David Haelterman who is very knowledgeable on the species of Colombian orchids. Arnie indicates that there is no better way to understand what an orchid species wants, and the range of conditions it can tolerate than by seeing it growing in the wild. His talk also will include additional highlights of orchids from some of the most excellent orchid collections in the Cali area of Colombia and the dizzying number of excellently grown species and other orchids, many seldom seen in America.          

  Arnie is an excellent and engaging speaker who readily shares his wealth of knowledge with the orchid community and this is a talk not to be missed. Arnie recently retired in July, 2022 from his career as a patent attorney at Qualcomm so he could spend more time with his plants, exercise, getting healthy, ukulele, gym, birding, etc.  At Qualcomm, he was responsible for putting GPS in our smartphones and has 149 patents worldwide to his name.

  Arnie has been growing orchids since he was a child in Hawaii in the 70’s. His father had a dendrobium plant that had set a pod, and Arnie got some help from Stanley Taba Orchid Nursery to flask the seeds. As a youth, he knew some of Hawaii's greatest orchid pioneers, including Ben Kodama, Tadao Kazumura, Isamu Ota, Richard Takafuji, Richard Takase, and Goodale Moir.   

  That first flask and others led to thousands of plants as a youth, and a lifelong interest in orchids that has survived college, career, multiple moves, and 6 orchid societies. He has been an American Orchid Society judge for over 30 years and he serves as an official photographer for our Pacific South AOS judging panel and has presented talks at both Palomar and San Diego County Orchid Societies. Arnie has won over 124 AOS awards and grows all sorts of orchids including cattleyas, phalaenopsis, paphiopedilums, including lots of rare and amazing plants. Over the years, he has amassed a collection of several thousand plants. Like many of us, Arnie also grows other types of plants, including epiphyllum cacti, aloes, plumerias, and fruit trees.

  The April opportunity table will be from Andy’s Orchids and may include some orchid species from Colombia.