January 2025 - Phyllis Prestia and Fellow Judges on AOS Outreach Judging

Phyllis Prestia

Our first meeting of the New Year will be held on the Second Wednesday, January 8, and will be a different type of program in that Phyllis Prestia, Head AOS Judge of the Southern CA Judging Section, will conduct an AOS Outreach Judging program for our society. A team consisting of Phyllis and accredited judges will attend our meeting, explain the judging process, review the society bloom table/show-and-tell table to see if there are any worthy candidates for AOS judging and then critique them. Society members will receive a plant registration form and a score form to try their hand at applying what they’ve learned.  This is a great way for the society to learn and understand what characteristics make a flower of your plant awardable. So please look at your blooming plants and bring in one or two that you think might be awardable. Judges will select plants to review and, if yours is awardable, you may elect to have it registered ($40 for AOS members, $60 for non-AOS members) or not. This should be a very educational meeting that allows us to demystify what goes into the AOS judging of orchids.

 We also will have a plant opportunity table at the end which will include some of the nice cattleyas that SVO provided to us late last year.