Please join us for our next meeting on Sunday June 2nd at the UNCC Greenhouse. Our guest speaker is Sam Tsui from The Orchid Inn will be speaking to us about Paphiopedilums.  He will be bringing plants for sale. Lunch starts at noon and the meeting begins at 1PM. Please bring your blooming plants for the show table.

Sam was born in Hong Kong on November 23, 1952. He traveled to the United States at the age of 22. He began growing orchids in the early 1980′s. After trying many types of orchids, he became a serious Paphiopedilum grower in 1985. In 1990, he began hybridizing with Paphiopedilums and continues that work today. As he became more involved with Paphiopedilums, he started selling commercially in 1995 as the Orchid Inn. He grew orchids in his basement and greenhouses attached to his house. As the business grew, in 2004, he purchased six acres of property and built his first commercial 6,000 square feet greenhouse. Currently he makes over 300 crosses, produces 4,000 to 5,000 flasks or approximately 100.000 seedlings annually.

Hybridizing is Sam’s passion. He only selects the best, most vigorous parent plants in his collection for breeding/hybridizing.  He continues to improve his breeding stock by selecting plants or flasks from his fellow orchid growers that he believes are outstanding examples of their type.

As a result of Sam’s breeding program, his orchids have been honored with approximately two hundreds and twenty three awards (as of April 6th, 2013) from the American Orchid Society, Cymbidium Society of America and European Orchid Congress.