September 2020 — Arnold Gum (online presentation)

Arnold GumWe are delighted to welcome Arnold Gum as speaker for our Tuesday, September 1st Joint SDCOS/POS Zoom meeting starting at 7:30 pm. Arnold will present a talk on Cattleya (Guarianthe) skinneri, the national flower of Costa Rica, also known as the Easter Orchid. Arnie was recently honored to be invited to judge a Cattleya skinneri show in Costa Rica. In his talk, Arnie will review the quality growth in recent C. skinneri line breeding and will look at one clone in particular: ‘Angela’ FCC. He says that the advancements in size, flower count, color, and form are amazing. He will present slides of some of the plants that were awarded at the show, as well as pictures of the C. skinneri habitat.

Arnie is an AOS judge and familiar figure at SDCOS and POS meetings and at local shows. He works as a patent attorney and, at Qualcomm, he was responsible for putting GPS in our smartphones. 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. Arnie has been an American Orchid Society judge for nearly 30 years. He serves as an official photographer for our Pacific South AOS judging panel and has presented at both Palomar and San Diego County Orchid Societies. Arnie has won over 85 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.