Jan 02, 2011
The creamy layer of orchids are often awarded by renouned orchid societies. American Orchid Society is an example and the largest orchid society that you might come across. AOS is a non-profit educational organisation and has established a good judging criteria. You might see something like this in capital letters along with the plant name AM/AOS. Here AM means Award of Merit and AOS means American Orchid Society.

A convey of judges examines exceptional orchids, checks all data related to the orchid and the excellence of the parentage. Various other criterias are used to see whether the specimens are indeed superior to the others of the similar type.

With the modern cloning techniques award winning plants are available for reasonable prices. It is also desirable to have hybrids of the award winners.

Award winner orchids are denoted with this logo on our website

Terms & Criteria used by the American Orchid Society

FCC - First Class Certificate (FCC/AOS)
A flower awarded a FCC should have scored over 90 points on a scale of 100 points. It indicates an extremely high quality. Only a very few (10-20) orchids receive such distinction.

AM - Award of Merit (AM/AOS)
This means that a flower from this plant should have scored from 80-89 points on a scale of 100. A few hundred orchids could win such a distinction each year.

HCC - Highly Commended Certificate (AM/AOS)
A flower from this plant should have scored 75-79 points on a scale of 100. The flower would ave room for improvement. A few hundred orchids receive such recognition.

AD - Award of Distinction (AD/AOS)
This award is specifically awarded to recognize new and exciting directions for breeding of Orchids.

AQ - Award of Quality (AQ/AOS)
Recognizes high quality new breeding of orchids.