Thanks for the complement. I am happy you (and hopefully others) find
it useful. The small project of indexing our own small collection of
orchid books (about 170 at last count) to help my wife find a picture
seems to have gotten out of hand over the last few years. I sometimes
wonder whether I should keep doing it since it takes a lot of time.
Comments like yours tell me it is worth continuing to do.

As far as the few hits go, I am sure there are a lot of reasons - not
the least of which is that FCC's are few and far between to begin
with.
Also, I have learned, from typing over 120,000 records, that even
though pretty clear guidelines or rules exist for typing the name of a
plant, they are often not followed, even by people and organizations
that should know better. Plants that have been awarded sometimes
appear in picture lables without the award designation, either because
the book was printed before the plant was awarded or the author and
publisher simply didn't put it in. Of the 120,212 records in the
database, only 1,976 of them have the string FCC in them and of course
that is not 1,976 different plants because pictures of some plants
appear many times (e.g. Blc. Malworth 'Orchidglade' appears 29 times
with the FCC designation but is in the database 35 times in total
including once with no award designation at all.

Also, when the plant is awarded by multiple organizations, the way it
is shown in the label may vary. A common way seems to be FCC/AOS-RHS
or FCC/RHS-AOS but I have also seen it printed as FCC/AOS, FCC/RHS and
the variations go on from there. The lack of consistancy makes it
difficult to find all the hits without doing multiple searches and
without being clairvoyant enough to guess all the search strings to
use.



On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 03:54:27 GMT, "Gene Schurg"
wrote:

Bob,

First of all...great site you have. I use it often to check names of plants
and where to go to find a picture.

My point of this thread is that I would expect that a plant awarded an FCC
from the RHS (or other group) should also score very high by other
organizations. At least that is what I thought until this discussion. I
find it interesting that a search of your files only yielded a short list of
plants with FCCs from both organizations.

It appears that a plant with an FCC from AOS may not get equal consideration
by the RHS and vice versa.

Not that any of this really matters in the big scheme of things....just
interesting observation.

Good Growing,
Gene





"Bob Betts" wrote in message
...
I don't know how often the AOS and other organizaitons award and FCC
to the same clone but it is not unheard of.
A quick search of my picture reference database found pictures for 11
different plants given FCC's by both the AOS and RHS. That doesn't
include plants which received FCC's from both organizations, but were
not labeled with both in the book or catalogue at the time of
publication of the picture.

The plants I found we

Angulocaste Tudor 'Bill Rinaman'
Brassolaeliacattleya. Norman's Bay 'Low'
Cymbidium Bourgondian 'Chateau' or 'Chateaux'
Doritaenopsis Red Coral 'Fuschia'
Laelia tenebrosa 'Walton Grange'
Paphiopedilum Winston Churchill 'Redoubtable'
Phragmipedium Memoria Dick Clements 'Jersey'
Sophrolaeliocattleya. Falcon 'Alexanderi'
Sophrolaeliocattleya. Falcon 'Westonbirt'
Vuylstekeara Cambria 'Plush'
Vuylstekeara Edna 'Stamperland'

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 01:53:32 GMT, "Gene Schurg"
wrote:

Susan,

I'm not sure I understand your point. If a plant gets an FCC/RHS then
AOS
judges will pass on scoring it?

If this is what you are saying then is an FCC/RHS as "valuable" as an
FCC/AOS? Somehow it doesn't seem that way.

Gene


"Susan Erickson" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 01:36:36 GMT, "J Fortuna"
wrote:

P.S.: Another thought:
"K Barrett" wrote in message
news:9npqd.110410$5K2.16436@attbi_s03...
If you looked in Wildcatt for previous AOS awards remember that
Wildcatt
doesn't include any of the awards from the Register of Awards
(the
RA).
So
there's a whole mess o' previous awards that aren't listed.


Both Kath and Joanna have points. I am going to try for another
couple. Ever been the second to say something is beautiful?
Most people don't want to reinforce another's position. So most
judges will pass on a plant that has a high award or a reasonably
high award. They will think they are not going to score the
plant higher, so it is a waste of time to score it. Sometimes it
is a case of "that is such an old cross we should be looking for
something new and better." Few stop to ask if there is new and
if it is better. All that said...

Joanna's point that RHS and AOS judging is different. RHS
judging never looks at the flower (even in ribbon judging) until
the plant has pasted muster. If the plant is not in good shape
the flower can not be at it's best. I recently ribbon judged
with an RHS judge on our judging team. It was very interesting.

Kath said it took one judge to nominate something for scoring.
It also often takes one nay sayer to stop a judging. If one of
the senior judges says something very negative about a breeding
line, plant age, or style, often the process will stall. It is
after all an educated opinion of the condition of the flower
and/or plant on a specific day at a specific time in the bloom
cycle of the plant.


SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/albums.php