Comments on the NZ Orchid Scene.

[Terryk]

Andy
There is great interest, I can hardly wait for the next installment.
On Tuesday night at a committee meeting I floated who would be described as" the fat slug" it took only one guess to get the answer.
On a sadder note Trevor Martin recently passed away, he was a good man.
Keep it up, loving it

[Gary S]

Definitely Andy - some more orchid enthusiast posts make good reading, wherever they are located in the world.

[MrCym]

Well tonight I will speak about another good guy. Wesley Ross-Taylor, known to all as Ross Taylor. Ross was originally a dairy farmer in the Otaki area who got the orchid bug later in life. But did he get it! Before he knew it, he had bought out Lindeman Orchids on a hill above Napier. I will digress a little here to tell a retold tale about one Bruce Lindeman. He was from the wine family in Aussie, maybe a black sheep. He started a Cymbidium nursery in Napier and the head grower was Kathleen Black's son, Peter. Now Peter's uncle was that Peter Black, Black and Flory in England so the tale is intriguing. Peter was a very talented chap and the nursery was immaculately apportioned. But apparently he and Brice Lindeman had a major blue and Peter forced him to buy him out whereupon he went to Otaki and established a fine leather business as I recall. When I first went to visit South Pacific Orchids, Russell Hutton was the Manager.

One thing has stuck in my mind about Lindeman. Ernest Hetherington of Stewart Orchids in CA was not a gossiper. I mentioned to Ernest on one of my visits that I had met Bruce Lindeman. Ernest went very quiet. In bits and pieces I think he told me that Lindeman got busted in the US for unlawful carnal knowledge of a minor and had contacted Ernest to find him a lawyer. The subject was never raised again by either of us.

Anyway Lindeman sold the business to a recently "retired" Ross Taylor and Ross made the nursery New Zealand's finest with a Lab of equal quality. They did Colchicine conversions and the highest quality Lab work as well as cut flower Cym growing and shipping. A most honest man, Ross did so many business deals on a handshake. He became well-known in The Netherlands and sold many clones there. Ross was a widower who remarried but the marriage ended abruptly and very sadly. He was to find love again and lived out a very productive life as a leading light in the Hawkes Bay Orchid Society and particularly in maintaining the John Easton Award, named for my Dad, which became NZ's premier orchid recognition. A man who had no enemies and a host of true friends! He is sadly missed.

[wolfman]

Well, Andy, your admittedly very funny and entertaining posts about “orchid weirdos” illustrate why in my whole life I was never a fan, nor member of any orchid society, as all of the have the typical “club hierarchy” with the bottom feeders rising to the top, rendering themselves very important, and then these bastards destroy slowly, but steadily whatever good is left in that respective organisation.

We really do need the orchid societies and clubs to keep the orchid hobby going and attract new members, but not at THIS expense.

Very sad !

[MrCym]

Well I seem to have little time to spare for any indirect orchid activities anymore. But I try and keep a few connections for feedback.

[MrCym]

I should be in bed getting ready for a very busy Saturday where I have about 1,000 Cym seedlings to pot up into plugs. I always do this task myself, I decide what to cull and what to save, always have, always will be, very fussy in these matters.

Tonight lets talk about the venerable "Murph" from this Forum. I met Murray Anderson when he was still a High School student in the Auckland area. That's quite a while ago now. When he graduated from high school, Murray wanted to come to the US and learn about commercial orchids. I drove down to LAX to meet him and my careful searching at the exit hallway saved me from meeting a cousin whom I couldn't stand. I had no idea he was US bound and I managed to bury my face in a newspaper until he had passed by and out of my life forever. Thank you Murray! So we headed back to Goleta, specifically the Dos Pueblos Orchid Company. There was a residential block as part of the property and Murray was found a place, a bogus Social Security number and put on the DP payroll. Hell, apart from me, Laverne, the Tanaka's and the Secretary, every other worker was on bogus documentation. Those were the days!

Murray or "Murph" as he was often called, soon got into the Orchids by Rowe orbit where John was able to fine tune his Cym harvesting and packing skills. All invaluable experience for NZ which from the late 1970's was experiencing a rapid growth in Cymbidium cut flower growing. Murray happily rode with me to AOS judgings in Los Angeles and also he developed a keen curiosity for Cymbidium memorabilia that he has maintained to this day. There was a strange interlude with a young lady and a white horse and an apparent overnight stay at Casa Murph but John Rowe and I could never get to the bottom of that tale! Sadly Murray's year flew by but he then went back to NZ where he became a truly valued Cym grower with experience and connections that could not be matched. Murray married Tracy whom I knew from Rotorua (Her Mum drove the hearse for Carol's funeral) so the friendship has been strengthened and remains to this day. Murray did get to visit us both in California before John Rowe's passing and the two of them got to do a Dos Pueblos visit in its current iteration as a wedding venue. I think the visit was a bit nostalgic for both John and "Murph".

Murray also has his Cym treasures which he grows to perfection. I could never imagine having to part with plants like Cym. parishii 'Sanderae' or Cym. insigne alba. Better that I should just croak rather than having to live apart from those special plants. If you live in NZ and haven't met Murray Anderson yet, make the effort to become acquainted. He has a lifetime of Cymbidium experience and experiences, you would find the visit memorable!

[Murph]

My heart skipped a beat when I saw Mr Cym was writing a wee note about “Murph”. I thought how bad will this look being lumped in with the other Kiwi ratbags, but, I shouldn’t have worried as it was all nice memories and a bit of fun. I am forever grateful to Andy when you said come on over and learn about orchids. It gave me a wonderful start in the commercial orchid growing world and the chance to meet so many big names in Orchids, not just from California but Holland and the UK also.Now mostly all gone unfortunately. Many growers are different today, less enquiring and less knowledgeable.

Most fellow forum members know Mr Cym well enough that the little anecdote regarding a lady and a white horse visiting me overnight while living in “ Little Tokyo”, that he mentions with a grin, was absolutely jacked up by you know who! ( while he was in South Africa!). A clever stunt indeed. Happy memories and the best of days really.

The moniker “ Murph” came about at the same time while living in Santa Barbara. Andy had Harry Sakell ( grower / breeder from New Jersey ) staying over for a few days. Harry the affable, easy going, fun guy with this huge herniated bellybutton that he just had to whip up his tee shirt and show everyone, could never get his head around saying Murray - so “Murphy” it was.

I would like Mr Cym to expand a little more on Russell Hutton. A superb grower, of all orchid genera, but something of an enigma.

[MrCym]

I saw a FB post by Russell just a couple of days ago! First time I'd seen his name in several years.

[MrCym]

Well L & R Orchids became quite an operation and Russell is the most knowledgeable person in orchid species that I know. Couldn't go a bar on his ex though, what a nasty piece of work she was.

L & R used to sell the hell out of species at the annual Tokyo Dome Show, enough almost to live on for the rest of the year in NZ! Russell has been very quiet so I wonder about his health. Maybe one of the NZ readers is up to date on his doings?

[MrCym]

Time to return to a really sly bastard, disappointingly dishonest! I think a lot of people in the orchid world, particularly in California, got to know Ray Dix. Ray was a really top guy, taken far too soon. He loved Cyms, bred some lovely hybrids and was particularly well-known among the Californian CSA enthusiasts. He was a regular at the annual Santa Barbara International Show where he judged for CSA and spoke at their annual Congresses. But he had a brother-in-law, one Joe Vance, who was cut from a very different cloth.

Vance was of Scottish ancestry with a strong accent to match. One of the most dishonest Scots I've ever run across. Let me tell you more.... When I left NZ permanently, I had to move hundreds of orchids. John Rowe built a large shade-house at their home on Corte Bella and with the kind assistance of numerous Torrance CSA volunteers, my large collection was re-accommodated. The Roses at Cal-Orchid took care of Catts and miscellaneous.

Anyway, as usually happens, there were just too many small plants to shift totally. I had lots of Colchicine-treated seedling crosses that had been done at South Pacific Orchids and I just couldn't move them all. I made a verbal deal with Joe Vance where I gifted him all the seedlings on the basis that if he bloomed any special tetraploids, the plant was to be shared. He got to keep and sell the rest. Simple and a very fair deal. I also had the mighty old Ford Van that was staying in NZ (left hand drive and all) and I made a deal with Vance that he would sell it and split the sale price. All ownership papers were left filled out! So guess what happened? Van first, the bastard stole the van, put it in his name and never gave me a brass razoo!

Such is life! Time passed, all of a sudden I get word on the underground telegraph that some hot new spotted Cym is being peddled in CA by my sworn enemy?? Its name: Magic Devon 'Maisie' 4n! The cunning bastard, Vance, trading as Villa Orchids, had bloomed out this super thing from my crossing, then cloned it at some shonky local Auckland area Lab and sold clones to a S. Californian nursery. You can imagine how happy I was about that...... Now, even Russell Hutton kindly got involved and forced Vance to part with a bulb and growth of the mother plant which he took up to Tokyo and handed over to me. One honest player in the scenario. Of course, given the sloppy Vance set-up, this plant tested positive for virus so I was left with the task of acquiring one of the clones for a breeding plant. This I had to do and of course, we fortunately have been able to take Magic Devon 'Maisie' 4n forward and make it possibly the most famous spotted pendulous intermediate Cym of the past quarter century but my intense dislike for both parties involved in this theft has survived to this day! We have had phenomenal success with this parent, much still unpublicized as it is at the forefront of our new 6n breeding lines in addition to the best 4n spotted intermediate pendulous around.