September 2025 - Tim Culbertson 'Lycastes'

Tim Culbertson

This month we are excited to welcome back Tim Culbertson, who will be speaking to our society about Lycastes. 

One of Tim’s passions has always been plants. He 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 his collection numbers nearly 3000. Tim currently manages the Paphs at Sunset Valley Orchids and he does hybridizing of a wide variety of genera. While he loves finding old, rare steppingstones in Paph breeding, he finds growing up his own hybrids is a blast. He enjoys making his culture the best it can be, and he has had numerous experiences with professional growers in California and on the East Coast, which has helped tremendously. At one point he was the youngest accredited judge with the American Orchid Society and has served in various capacities with local orchid societies.  Tim loves meeting other people who like orchids too, and doing so often finds him traveling to shows, vendors, and peoples’ greenhouses to see the latest and greatest in new hybrids and to get the best orchid gossip. He likes to be involved in plants as much as possible.  

In addition to Longwood, he has 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.  

For our meeting, Tim will be sharing a presentation on recent advances in Lycaste breeding, culture, and growing. These plants are easy to grow and flower, are vigorous, and have low demands on culture, and as such are wonderful plants!  Tremendous advancements in breeding Lycastes have been made recently, and he will share some of these with you, as well as help identify some of the important species in the backgrounds of historically important and modern Lycastes. By the end of this presentation, you will have a new appreciation of what goes into breeding trends for these types of plants, as well as an appreciation of their beautiful flowers and ease-of-growth.  

Tim will be supplying plants for the opportunity table as well as bringing plants of the newest, modern, cutting-edge Lycaste breeding for sale.