Francisco Miranda to Speak at April 7 Meeting

For our Houston Orchid Society meeting on April 7, we are excited to have Francisco Miranda speaking about rupicolous Laelia species of Brazil. Francisco will also be bringing orchids from his and fellow Brazilians’ cutting-edge breeding programs for sale at the meeting.

Francisco Miranda was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1956. He has been growing orchids since 1979, the same year he got his degree in biology, and in 1981 he began his taxonomic studies of the orchid family. During 1981, he lived from March to November in the city of Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, which is in the middle of the Amazon region. In 1982, he returned to Rio de Janeiro, where he began making field trips to Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, mainly to try to find rupiculous Laelia species in their natural habitats.

Between 1983 and mid-1985, Francisco went back to Manaus, where he began his work on his master’s degree and continued to make extensive field trips to Rondonia and the area of the future dam of Tucuruí, in the state of Pará. From the hundreds of herbarium specimens prepared, many new species were described in subsequent years, mostly in the genera of Catasetum and Mormodes. In mid-1985, Francisco finished his master’s degree and his thesis, “Section Cattleyodes of the genus Laelia,” and continued to make frequent field trips to the habitats of the Brazilian Laelias.

Francisco’s years of orchid field research have resulted in many new described species and several scientific papers in reviewed scientific journals of Brazil, the United States, and Germany, and also two books. The first one, published in Japan, of which he wrote about one-third, includes orchids from the eastern coast of Brazil plus the central region and mountains of Minas Gerais and Bahia states. The second book, published in 1996, covered the subject of the orchids of the Brazilian Amazon region. These two books are not taxonomic treatments, but rather illustrated guides on very interesting Brazilian areas.

Since 1988, Francisco has been going at least twice a year to the U.S. and other countries with the main purpose of giving lectures to orchid societies on Brazilian orchids. From 1986 to 2000, he owned an orchid nursery in Rio de Janeiro, Orquidário Boa Vista, specializing in producing superior cultivars of Brazilian orchid species. In 1996, he was the Program Chairman for the 15th World Orchid Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Presently, he owns Boa Vista Orchids, a Haines City, Florida–based nursery, where high-quality species in the Cattleya alliance are being produced, continuing the Orquidário Boa Vista tradition. Since 2001, he has been a qualified Taxonomic Authority for the American Orchid Society, specializing in the determination of Brazilian orchids, mainly of the Cattleya alliance.

Since moving to the United States, Francisco has concentrated even more on giving lectures throughout the U.S., Canada, and also in Brazil. More recently he resumed his taxonomic work and is guiding tours to Brazil on a more regular basis with the main objectives of orchid observation, photography, and conservation awareness.