November 2022 – Arnold Gum

Arnold GumWe are delighted to welcome back Arnold Gum as speaker for our November meeting.  Arnie will present the talk ‘Orchid Sherlock’ which addresses genetic influences of different species.  Arnie will teach us how to spot what's in the background of your orchids.  He will talk about tag sleuthing (broken tags, faded tags, lost tags, etc.) including Cattleya species influences and Phalaenopsis species influences. Arnie is an excellent and engaging speaker who readily shares his wealth of knowledge with the orchid community.  It is a talk not to be missed.

Arnie recently retired in July of this year from his career as a patent attorney at Qualcomm so he can spend more time with his plants, exercise, getting healthy, ukulele, gym, etc.  At Qualcomm, he was responsible for putting GPS in our smartphones and has a few hundred 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 nearly 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 85 AOS awards and grows all sorts of orchids including cattleyas, phalaenopsis, paphiopedilums, as well as 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.

Our plant table this month will be from Sunset Valley Orchids.