Within the AOS judging system, the system has evolved over the 30 years that I have been involved.
When I was a student back in the late 90’s, and I was asked to offer an evaluation on a candidate, size was the first thing I talked about. That was the custom. All other points came after size such a color, clarity, clearness of markings, arrangement and of course form.
But then in around the year 2,000, we got away from that. Form came to the forefront much more. Richness of color, clarity of markings, petal length and width, dorsal sepal size and the pouch had more importance placed of them. The last thing that really came along was looking more carefully at the reverse of the flower and we kind of placed a bit more emphasis on the synsepal.
Take Rothschildianum with its hundreds of awards. It use to be three flowers were enough, then four, now 5 or even 6 carries more weight. Dorsal width has gotten more notice as well as petal width. And whether or not you like the golden Roth’s. or the red Roth’s., color intensity is important.
