While I'm not a member of the society (they meet at night, and I work at night so its hard to go), I had to make a special effort to go to last nights meeting because Glenn Lehr was in attendance last night to talk Japanese orchids. His presentation was mostly about his many trips to Japan and he sold it pretty well as I'm convinced I now have to go. He did bring plants with him and of course his fun personality.
Here he is manning the table of neos and others he brought:
He showed me something I thought was pretty cool-- a chart developed by the Japan fukkuran society (no idea if I got the name right) that describes all of the many different neos and where they fall in the hierarchy. It is of course in Japanese but it was neat to see anyway:
He also showed me this plant, which he called the king of neos, which he promptly corrected himself and said maybe it should be emperor of neos, Fuukiden:
And yes, the price tag does say 950. I believe he said this one sold, too. Who bought it, I do not know. I was a few hundred dollars short.
And what would the visit be if I didn't pick up some plants. Before he left for his trip, which also took him to Salt Lake City and Denver (where I live), I had emailed him about the name differences between the various smaller sedireas and when I told him I want a chabo, he threw one into the box for me. How could I not go? I wasn't planning on any neos but geez how could I not? I wanted to get a tiger in my collection but also wanted a variegated one too. The tiger I went with is Kinrokaku. The name on the tag I believe is misspelled. I notice that happens a lot in Japanese to English letter translations. The variegated ones were pretty darn pricey! So ill have to save up for those.
Behold... El Chabo! (Decided it should have a Latino influenced name):
And Kinrokaku:
Notice the roots? Tiger and red roots is what got this one sold. Lol
So that was pretty much it.
Also, Adrienne, Quay and Jim I mentioned you all to Glenn at that you said hi and he was launched into a story and wonderful things to say about each of you! He was particularly excited about Quay and how could he not? Not Bob/ Quay is awesome. He told the story of how Quay's last name is of great significance in Japan. Maybe we should all get our own Quays and go into business.