South Coast Orchid Society

Carl and Imogene Keyes were well known in their time for an astonishing string of awards as well as numerous Paphiopedilum, Phalaenopsis, and Odontoglossum hybrids. Very little was published about their accomplishments, and few growers today know their names.

Thanks to the efforts of the Keyes family, a collection of over 2,300 color slides and other materials has been preserved and digitized, along with breeding records. We present a gallery of these materials here, providing a visual record not only of Carl and Imogene's hybrids, but also of the plants that they grew and loved, and which served as the basis for many modern hybrids. For many of these "old" hybrids and cultivars, no other photos are known.

The color slides, with dates ranging from 1958 through 1983, are generally of good quality. In particular, only a handful show serious fading or color distortions, and as they are here digitized with modern technology, the images are of much better quality than many of the award photos from that era that have found their way into the AOS awards database.

The slides were preserved in dozens of small Kodak boxes and other containers. Most of the boxes — the ones that contained only slides from a single roll of film — were carefully labeled, even if some of the slides from a particular roll had been removed and filed elsewhere. Several rolls were entirely unlabeled. There were also several larger boxes of slides and a number of envelopes containing mixed slides. There were also two round slide "carousels" containing slides for two lecture programs, along with the lecture scripts.

The scripts for at least 16 other lectures have been preserved, most of them accompanied by a slide list. A handful were easily reconstructed, and with further study, most of the lectures can probably be restored, an intriguing window into what orchid clubs were doing in their heyday.

The slides have been digitized and organized into "galleries" using Juicebox software.

Among the highlights, we found at least 160 award slides or copies of award slides, from AOS, CSA, and ODC judging programs. A number of these slides have never been published. There are also a number of slides showing hybrids that were created by the Keyes but never registered, an oversight that may now be corrected, thanks to the breeding records and the slides that document the successful results.

For consistency with other materials in the archive, contemporary publications, and the need to preserve the original slide labels, orchid names generally follow Sander rather than current taxonomy. The task of adding current nomenclature and other information gleaned from the Keyes archive and other sources may continue as time permits.

Keyes Photo Gallery Menu

• Award Slides and Copies (AOS, CSA, ODC)
• Unregistered Hybrids: 28 hybrids, presumably created by the Keyes but never registered.
• Brassocattleya hybrids
• Brassolaeliocattleya hybrids
• Paphiopedilum × ang-thong, first noted as a plant imported by the Keyes, temporarily designated "keyesianum", before Dr. Jack Fowlie was able to visit the Ang-Thong islands and determined that this novel form was most likely a natural hybrid population derived from niveum (from which the tall inflorescence) and godefroyae (from which the spots).
• Paphiopedilum rothschildianum

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