Catt. Lc. Bonanza
----- Original Message -----From: gary bloomSent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 9:31 PMSubject: Lc. Bonanza 'Lucky Strike'Dear Sir:My name is Gary Bloom, and I reside in Fort Lauderdale Florida. My father, James Bloom of Bloom's Nursery, died in 2002, and was a pioneer in the orchid business in South Florida and his plants were known around the world. A friend who knows my dad's plants said he found a reference to this plant on the web site of the Trinidad Garden Club. He believes that you are the proud owner of this remarkable plant.
In 1964, my father came by one single Catt. Lc. Bonanza plant in a nursery in Miami. When it bloomed he knew it was a special plant, and he exhibited it, and it was awarded 83 points in November of 1964. After the nursery closed in 1979, all copies of the plant disappeared.
There is a picture, which I believe is that plant ('Lucky Strike'), on your club's web site, and I was thrilled to see it. My dad is the first person to ever use the name 'Lucky Strike' on any plant genus or cultivar, and he did so because there was only one plant bought that day, and it was a beauty. The plant had not bloomed, at the time of purchase, and at first blooming, it was one of the 10 highest awarded Bonanza?s of the hundreds exhibited over the last 4 decades.
Wondering what has become of it, I have been looking for this plant, and others, for the 5 years that have passed since my dad's death, to be added to a memorial collection, named in his honor. If you are the proud owner of this plant, I wonder if there is some agreement we might come to regarding my possibly acquiring a division, at some point in the future. (I am not a collector, so to speak, or a plant seller, my interest is personal!)
It tends to annoy me when people want to bum plants from me in my dad's? memorial collection, so I understand if you are not interested, but even if that is so, I would like to correspond and learn more about the plant as it is today (how you came by it, other history, etc.), and possibly you would like to no more of its early years, the award and a photograph the day after the award, in 1964.
I have found very few of the plants named for and exhibited by my father, but just knowing this plant has survived is a major satisfaction...my dad would be thrilled.
I have written a book on Multiple Sclerosis, and have a science web site, with a section on orchids and the nursery as it was, and as the collection is today. The attached picture was taken the day after the plant was awarded. Most of it is pictures from the distant past.
Thank you,Gary Bloom A Science Archive gmb1329@bellsouth.net