Here Comes the Judge…

You really have to love orchids to find yourself in a hotel meeting room at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday. And there I was, volunteering as a clerk for the experts judging the entries at Treasure Valley Orchid Society show.

There’s too much work involved to hold a cup of coffee. Since time is short before the show opens to the public, there are many plants to look at and they’re displayed all over the room, a clerk’s job is to help the judges find them quickly, take some notes as they inspect each entry and, when the winners are decided for each category, place the ribbons on the right plants.

I clerk, of course, to learn more about the plants – but also because I’m fascinated by the encyclopedic knowledge of the judges. (A good, easy-to-read summary of what orchid judges look for and what to get out of an orchid show can be found on Texan Ryan Levesque’s Orchids Made Easy website.)

This weekend, I worked as a clerk for David Morris of Bend, Ore. (seen in the photo), and Charles Wilson of Sherwood, Ore. They were so much fun – not the least bit stuffy and, at the same time, very serious about their duties.

These guys whipped out a measuring tape to gauge the length of the tendrils on Paphiopedilums, debated the correct name of an orchid that had been officially changed in recent years, and threw around words like “inflorescence” (which – I had to look it up – means a group or cluster of flowers on a stem).

They regaled us with funny stories about pollinating orchids under microscopes. Sometimes, they made their team of three clerks vote on what we thought their decisions ought to be – and then explained why we were right or wrong.

In short, if you have to get up that early on a Saturday, you ought to have at least that much fun, and learn something too. OK – I learned that I’ll never be an orchid judge! But I’m glad there are people who have that kind of patience and expertise and are willing to share it with the rest of us.