Another aloha from Hawaii

[Miki]

Aloha. I've been a member of this Forum for several year and have been on and off (mostly off), and don't recall if I ever introduced myself.

I live on the island of Hawaii, state of Hawaii, and am a commercial orchid nursery owner/operator (Nakaji Orchids). Don't look for my website cause I don't have one - yet. My interests now are primarily breeding coerulea (blue) Cattleya, a few other Cattleya colors, and a sprinkling of Phals., Vanda, and Cymbidiae (Cymbidium, Catasetusm, Cycnoches, Mormodes, intergenerics). Aside from the coerulea Catts, I like to try making "weird" intergeneric crosses (only have a very few in the flasks now).

I do my own seed flasking and am playing around with cloning small quantities for eventual treatment/conversion into polyploids. My experience in orchids runs about 30 years and the hybridizing was going on from the start. I've only recently started to register some of the better crosses since I'll be using them to go to the next generation (or for commercial purposes). In the overall scheme of things, I'm a very small business/operation and do not produce tons of plants at any given time, even though there may be lots of crosses in flasks.

Unfortunately, I've killed more than my fair share of orchids, including those that were quite valuable and/or cannot be replaced. With age came a little bit more wisdom so I try not to bite off more than I can deal with now (although with orchids there always seems to be room for just one more).

Aside from orchids, I enjoy shoreline big-game fishing (do a Google on Albert Nakaji) and do not do enough of that.

This Forum has been educational and enjoyable. Perhaps I'll be able to participate more actively (if time is available).