Thanks all for the kudos!
A lot of the credit goes to Dot, John, David, and Ramon for sharing their excellent photography!!! Tom, Leo, and Graham read drafts it seems ages ago. It just takes a while from soup to nuts.
Yes, the story Tom mentioned is in the Orchid King, left it out for sake of space.
I must note that the editor changed some of my preferred terminology in the interest of the AOS's allegiances. Fair enough, I suppose. Violating the use of forma for color forms is one example. They also sunk moq back as a variety of glauco because Kew did recently. For the record, I vehemently keep moq and glauco apart!
Moq and glauco breed very differently. Keeping them "together" has lead to years of "intergrading" the two and a loss of "pure" examples of glauco. It was VERY hard to find a non-dubious pic of a "pure" glauco in the AOS award slides- thanks David for providing a great example!
All should note that to make a decent ID of a cochlo species, it is most useful to have pix of the plant! Plant base, top of leaves, bottom of leaves, leaf margins, inflorescence, bracts...
Wow. Seems like I've been away for a while!
Work has been crazy- we hired some new faculty and a big part of my job is spending their money on science toys. Oddly, Newport and Thorlabs (research grade laser vendors) had black Friday sales- I shopped there yesterday, not at Best Buy etc! And spent a couple times more than I make in a year. Dang, I even had to cancel a trip to MI
Missed the chance to thank Dot again personally for the pix!
I hope to start contributing more again here soon...