Tim Culbertson: Holcoglossums, The Next Big Thing in Vandas

Although I teach middle school kids for a living, one of my passions has always been plants. I 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 my collection numbers nearly 3000. While I love finding old, rare stepping stones in paph breeding, I also do a little hybridizing of my own, and growing up my own babies is a blast. I am an accredited judge with the American Orchid Society, and have served in various capacities with various orchid societies in California and on the East Coast. I love meeting other people who like orchids too, and doing so often finds me traveling to shows, vendors, and peoples’ greenhouses to see the latest and greatest in new hybrids and to get the best orchid gossip. I like to be involved in plants as much as possible: in addition to Longwood, I’ve 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, I really like plants.

For your meeting, I’ll be sharing a presentation on Holocoglossums: The Next Great Thing in Vandas. Holcoglossums are a relatively new genus to Vandaceous breeding, and they are already making a big splash: they are miniature, adaptable, and make great compact plants for windowsills or outdoors in Southern California. By combining Holcoglossums with basically every Vandaceous genus under the sun, we have been able to come up with some spectacular new combinations; in many cases, these are so new that they haven’t even been named yet! This is truly cutting-edge breeding, and you will be amongst the first to see and appreciate these new directions in miniature Vandaceous plants for outdoor or windowsill growing here. By the end of this presentation, you will have a new appreciation of the range of plant habits, floral forms, and colors of Holcoglossum species and hybrids, as well as an appreciation of their lovely flowers and ease-of-growth.