AOS Speaker Center

Alan Koch owns and operates Gold Country Orchids where he specializes in miniature and compact Cattleya’s along with miniature species. Alan started growing orchids in 1969 with three Cymbidiums given to him by an aunt. While in college he became interested in other orchids and discovered many would grow outdoors in Southern California. He has moved five times as his orchid obsession has led to the need for more growing space. With the last move, he purchased 10 acres of land in Lincoln, Califor...

Art holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State and an MBA from James Madison University. He founded Chadwick & Son Orchids Inc. in 1989 with his father who had been growing orchids since 1943. The Chadwick’s first book, The Classic Cattleyas, from 2006 sold out and an updated second edition was released last year. Martha Stewart favorably reviewed the book and had both Chadwick’s on her TV Show. A second book, First Ladies and their Cattleyas: A Century of Namesake Orchids, i...

Bill Thoms has grown and shown orchids for more than 45 years in the central Florida area. He has more awards for Culture in Bulbophyllums than anyone else in the world (51 so far) – and he and Doris Dukes together have 105 Cultural Awards in 30 different genera. The American Orchid Society has added a new Annual Award for the Bulbophyllums, the Bill Thoms Award. Bill gives talks all over the world on a wide range of topics ranging from his specialty, “Bulbophyllums”, to General Orchid Cultur...

Carol Beule is an EMMY award winning Costume Designer with a Master of Fine Arts in both Costume and Lighting Design from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was a professional Costume Designer from 1974 until her retirement in July of 2017. She has grown all species of orchids since purchasing a home at the base of the Hollywood Hills 25 years ago, and it has been her quest to discover which orchids will thrive in the unique climate we have in the San Fernando Valley and it’s surroundin...

Carol Klonowski has been growing orchids since the 1980's when a friend in Berkeley, California, gave her a cattleya and it bloomed out with three big, dark lavender flowers and an intoxicating fragrance. She built an entire greenhouse in her backyard to accomodate the precious plant, which only led her to buy more orchids. Then another friend gave her a gift membership to the Orchid Society of California and it's been a serious hobby and passionever since. She can recall going to monthly meetin...

I have been growing orchids for over 35 years. I am a certified Orchid Judge in the Chicago Judging Center and where I serve as Treasurer. I am also Past President of the MidAmerican Orchid Congress also serving on the Education Committee. I am a member of the Batavia Orchid Society, Batavia, Illinois. I have been its president for three terms. I am currently working with the AOS in presenting the very successful webinars and serve on the Education Committee, Library Committee, Governance Commi...

Christopher Satch is a Professor at the New York Botanical Gardens, as well as the CEO and Founder of NYC Plant Help, a horticultural consultancy for indoor and outdoor growers in the greater New York area. Having been featured on NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, and more, Christopher breaks down the science behind growing plants and explains how plants grow in human-understandable terms. Having specialized in plant physiology and pathology, you can ask him any orchid questio...

After receiving his degree in biochemistry from the University of Toronto, Dave opted to step outside his chosen field and operated a tropical fish import business for eight years. Upon returning to school, Dave received a degree in enology and viticulture from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. While attending Brock, Dave began acquiring orchids one 2” pot at a time and before he graduated, Dave had over 100 orchids. Winemaking and a passion for orchids prompted Dave to seek a warm...

Clark Riley has been an active orchid grower since 1957. At the age of six, he got his first plant, a probably-collected Yellow Ladyslipper (Cypripedium pubescens) from a perennial nursery. The plant died a miserable death in a short time, but not before blooming and cementing a love of orchids that has lasted over half a century. He has labored ever since to make amends by promoting the sound cultivation of Ladyslippers. He grows a wide range of orchids, including several thousand terrestrials...

Dr. Bill Goldner is best known in the orchid world as the owner of Woodstream Orchids with his wife Lynn Evans-Goldner. A life-long outdoorsman, Bill’s current mid-life crisis is fly fishing for trout, steelhead, and salmon, a passion he shares with Lynn and their son Zane. Many of the hybrid and cultivar names registered and used by Woodstream Orchids are names of the many places they have fished. Now Zane (age 14) is part of the pack which includes golden retriever Luna. In fact, at age four Z...

Ed Weber began growing orchids in 1999 after he inherited his grandmother's collection. Not a 'Plant Person', his curiosity got the better of him and he began reading about these marvelous exotic treasures that were now in his care. 12 plants became 20, which became 50, and so forth until his home and garage (no room for a greenhouse!) looked like a tropical rainforest! In 2001 he joined The Southeastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society (SEPOS) and soon learned that he needed to become an expert in t...

Eric has been growing orchids for over 30 years under the greenhouse name of River Valley Orchids and specializes in South American Species with a focus on Brassia, Maxillaria and Phragmipedium. He has spoken internationally and across the United States. Eric has had culture chapters published by Guido Braem in his book on Paphiopedilum and in his book on Phragmipedium. He also has a feature article on Maxillaria in Orchid Digest and several of his Maxillaria photos published in Eric Christen...

Erica Hannickel is a nonfiction author and professor of history at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, as well as a master gardener. An orchid enthusiast for more than 20 years, she currently grows about 150 orchids at home on two baker’s carts and in a miniature orchid cabinet. Her most recent book Orchid Muse: A History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022) chronicles little-known stories of orchids involving empresses, artists, enslaved people, and naturalists fro...

Professionally, Eron is a pilot, but he is also a very diverse orchid grower and breeder. He received his first orchid (a cattleya) as a gift from his dad in 2002 and first started growing them hanging outside, on windowsills, and then under lights. His orchid collection really took off in 2008 after he built a greenhouse and now has about 1000 orchids. He specializes in Phragmipediums and blue Cattleyas, and has even done his own hybridizing with them. His most recent passion are the Vandas! Er...

Fred Clarke has dedicated over 44 years to developing orchids hybrids and producing select species for the orchid enthusiast. These hybrids are one-of-a-kind plants, like original pieces of art. Fred began growing orchids and built his first greenhouse in 1977. He is committed to the education of orchid hobbyists from around the world in the culture of their plants. He is also a professional grower and manager in the horticultural industry; he applies these skills at his orchid nursery, Sunset ...

Gary Yong Gee [surname Yong Gee] is an Australian born Chinese, and lives in Brisbane, Australia. He began growing orchids around 40 years ago. These days, he maintains a large hobby greenhouse, cultivating Australian native, and exotic species. He has over 100,000 orchid photographs taken on travels to parts of Australia, New Guinea, Asia, Europe, Central and South America, South Africa, and Madagascar, at shows, and in situ. Gary is an orchid judge with the Australian Orchid Council. He is al...

I was bitten by the orchid bug about 20 years ago. My first orchid was…you guessed it, a white phalaenopsis. It wasn’t until my mother-in-law sent me home with two boxes full of not white phalaenopsis that I became obsessed. Sound familiar? Next came joining the Western North Carolina Orchid Society. From there it was Board member, Vice President, President, and Annual Show Chair (for 11 years). I am currently serving on the AOS Membership and Marketing Committee and the Affiliated Societies Co...

I am a native of Athens, GA, and graduate of Princeton and Duke University Medical School. I divided my medical career between Duke and Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte. I retired from the latter in 2008 and currently work as a medical consultant doing disability determinations for Social Security and overseeing continuing medical education for the NC Medical Society. An acquaintance abandoned some Cattleya plants on my porch about 40 years ago and the disease caught hold. I joined the T...

T.J. is a retired computer systems specialist and systems analyst. He designed computers and wrote computer software to manage hotels. His love for orchids began when he lived in Southern California and started growing Cymbidiums in his yard. For quite a few years, every secretary in the company where he worked received, anonymously, a Cymbidium blossom on Valentine’s Day. Since retiring to Mexico he has been rescuing orchids from downed trees and broken limbs before they are eaten by animals or...

Jean Ikeson wears many different hats volunteering for the AOS. If you have a question about AOS judging, ask Jean.

Operated by Jim and Melana Davison, Jim-N-I Orchids provides quality orchids for the novice to the advanced collector. Specializing in a diverse selection of exotic and showy genera, including Cattleya, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, Bulbophyllum and Catasetum. Plants for the novice are selected for ease of culture while plants for the advanced grower focus on the collectable species and contemporary hybrids. Jim and Melana are both accredited American Orchid Society judges, have garnered multiple...

He was born in Bangkok Thailand. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Agriculture from Kasetsart University, Thailand and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Horticulture (Orchid breeding) from University of Hawaii, USA in 1984 under the supervision of Professor Dr. Haruyuki Kamemoto. After graduation, he started working on orchid breeding at the Department of Agriculture, Thailand, then moved to Mahidol University to teach and conduct the research on orchid conservation and utilization. He has been ...

I am a third generation orchidholic; a member of the AOS, and several local Orchid Societies. I worked in my father’s orchid nursery throughout high school, college and beyond, till I left for the US in 1977. After almost 20 years away from the orchid scene, in 1994 I started growing orchids again. By 2010 I was laying the foundation for a hobby business; since 2017 I have been self-employed, and active in orchid shows throughout the Northeastern US. While my primary interest centers on Vanda...

Manuel Aybar works in the Technology Industry. He is originally from the Dominican Republic (A grower’s paradise, as he describes it). He has been growing orchids for approximately 26 years. The genus that got him started was Dendrobium in which he specializes (phalaenopsis-type). Member of the American Orchid Society since 1997 and the Greater North Texas Orchid Society since 2000. Manuel Aybar is an Accredited Judge of the American Orchid Society Judging program, and serves currently as a Cha...

The author, Martin R. Motes Ph.D., a Research Associate at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, has maintained a lifelong interest in the genus Vanda. He began as a boy in the late 50’s collecting the new hybrids which were coming out of Hawaii and Singapore and growing them in a shade house in Miami. While still in high school, he started to import Vanda species from India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in substantial quantities in order to select the best flowered forms for hybridizat...

Mary has been interested in plants for most of her adult life, and has been growing orchids on and off for the last 40 years, despite several cross country moves as part of her “other life” as a biomedical scientist. Her passion for orchids was rekindled when she moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1997 and attended an orchid show. Returning home with a few plants, she decided to join a local orchid society to learn more about taking care of them, and from these beginnings, her current passio...

Operated by Jim and Melana Davison, Jim-N-I Orchids provides quality orchids for the novice to the advanced collector. Specializing in a diverse selection of exotic and showy genera, including Cattleya, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, Bulbophyllum and Catasetum. Plants for the novice are selected for ease of culture while plants for the advanced grower focus on the collectable species and contemporary hybrids. Jim and Melana are both accredited American Orchid Society judges, have garnered multiple...

Dr. Rob Griesbach earned a Ph.D. in genetics from Michigan State University in 1980. The following year, he joined USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and retired in 2020. For his first 25 years, Rob conducted a broad-based research program in ornamental plant genetics. For the last 15 years, he served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Technology Transfer where he provided leadership for the management of the USDA-ARS’s intellectual property. He authored 151 scientific papers...

Ron Kaufmann is chair of the American Orchid Society Conservation Committee and a founding director of the Orchid Conservation Alliance. Ron has been growing orchids for more than 25 years and has travelled extensively to view orchids in the wild in Asia and South America, particularly Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia. Ron is a marine biologist by training, and his scientific work includes studies of Antarctic and deep-sea ecosystems as well as marine communities in coastal Southern California. His...

Ron is currently the organization’s Chief Education and Science Officer. He started growing orchids in Northern California about 60 years ago at the age of eight with a cattleya purchased from a local grower. This single plant quickly became a collection occupying every window facing east or south and his fascination with orchids has never waned. Over the years his private collection has numbered in excess of 2,500 plants; a direct result of no willpower or common sense. Ron’s growing exp...

Ron Parsons has been growing orchids for nearly 49 years, and has been interested in the species for most of that time. He loves to photograph orchids and other flowers whenever he can, and does so as often as possible. Ron has more than 100,000 digital images, most of which are of orchids, and still retains a slide library that exceeds 100,000 botanical images. He has given more than 500 talks on various botanical topics, and has nearly 6500 published photos. Ron has co-authored four books on ...

Steven A. Frowine first started growing orchids under lights when he was in high school. Since then, his love and sometimes obsession for orchids has continued to grow. He has tended orchids professionally as a horticulturist when he worked in Hawaii at the National Tropical Botanical Garden and at Missouri Botanical Garden, where he was Chairman of Indoor Horticulture and managed one of the largest orchid collections in the United States — more than 10,000 plants. Steve’s greatest pleasure fro...

Steve Gonzalez has been growing orchids for over 40 years. He is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He worked with orchids in a local garden center and then gained more experience working with the collection of the Botanical Gardens of the University of Puerto Rico, then to Pennock Gardens a largest wholesale/retail garden center on the Island at that time (i.e. like Bachman’s). After college, he returned to learn to grow orchids beside windows and under fluorescent lights and then under hig...

Proficient in Chinese, English, Japanese and German. IUCN SSC Orchid Specialist Group expert and IUCN SSC China Species Specialist Group expert, Huanglong National Park senior advisor, Hengduan Mountains Biotechnology president. In 1998, together with her late husband Dr. Holger Perner, joined the cooperation project "International Trade of Chinese Orchids" between the CITES Secretariat and the Chinese State Forestry Ministry, was in the charge of the international trade. She works for Huang...