I am a biochemist by training, but spent a lot of time during my childhood hiking the Swiss Alps. My father, a Geologist interested also in plants and reptiles, together with his good friend, a botany professor from Zurich, guided me through the beauty of the area explaining me plants and rocks, and how they interact. The botanist also introduced me to the Orchid family of plants, which has been fascinating me ever since with its amazing variety of shapes, colours, and habitats.
For the past 2.5 years I had been living as an ExPat in CT, and spent a significant amount of my weekends looking for orchids native to the Northeast of the US. The final two months of our stay we then spent on a Road trip across the US, which has been an absolutely fabulous experience. In the meantime I have returned to Europe, to the South Eastern corner of Germany near Austria and my home country. While not as novel to me as the US, there are a lot of interesting Orchids growing along the Alps, also species that I hadn't seen previously in Switzerland.
I would be very happy to be contacted on any of the above and share experiences hunting orchids etc...
I am a member of the Native Orchid Conference, and have published two articles in their journal, one on my confusion on how to properly identify Platanthera species, subspecies/variants, and hybrids: (https://www.nativeorchidconference.org/_files/ugd/8170e0_eabbf1f4f7804db287b32bbc3141a1c5.pdf),
and the other on our road trip through the US:(https://www.nativeorchidconference.org/_files/ugd/8170e0_476d9df645bc405ba58e0b11cb96410d.pdf).
As may have become evident from the recent shift of my observations to the Barcelona area, we have now moved to Catalunya. While I have spent the winter here already, my wife and dog just joined doing a little road trip from Germany through Switzerland and France to our new home. I have been, and still am, trying to learn and understand the local Orchid Flora, which is a lot of fun - but I am also grateful for, and totally dependent on, help from local experts. There is so much to explore out there!!
As I am closing in on retirement (OK, it's still 6-7 years to go, but still...) and my wife is Japanese, from Takamatsu, one plan is to explore Japan's native terrestrial Orchids, starting from her home town.