Australian Orchid Foundation

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Project: 362/2024

Title: International Speaker’s Tour in Australia. Speaker: Tom Mirenda, an internationally renowned author and orchid educator
Applicant: John Varigos

Tom, who is visiting Australia to attend the 8th Internation Orchid Conservation Conference in Perth in September, has agreed to give a series of talks together with John Varigos. The talks will take the format of John Varigos, co-Chair of the AOF, presenting a short talk on the AOF and its activities followed by Tom Mirenda speaking on a topic chosen by the local society from Tom’s extensive library of talks.

An orchid grower himself since 1980, Tom Mirenda was the Smithsonian Gardens’ orchid collection specialist for more than 15 years. Along with his duties maintaining and curating the Smithsonian’s collection of 9,000 orchids, Tom helped to develop educational displays for Smithsonian Garden exhibits visited by hundreds of thousands of museum patrons. He frequently travels around the U.S. and internationally, giving talks and presentations to scientists as well as the general public about orchid ecology, pollination biology, and strategies for orchid conservation.

For the past 18 years, Tom has written two monthly columns (Tom’s Monthly Checklist and Genus of the Month) for ORCHIDS magazine and in 2017, along with two scientists from Kew, published The Book of Orchids for the University of Chicago Press which contains very intriguing and unusual information on about 600 orchid species.

He is currently the Director of Horticulture Education and Outreach for the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

It is planned that Tom and John will give talks in Melbourne, Geelong, Sale, Bega, Canberra, Wollongong and Sydney.