This season that has ended for me, including judging. I had a learning curve adjustment will judging this year. I had a judge on one of my panels that was trying to explain to me how they judged collections my noting the position of each daffodil and how many faults, meaning tears, nicks, scratches, mittens, etc., each daffodil had, and the winner was the one that had the least number of faults.
I decided that I must have been missing something in judging school and continued to judge the daffodils based on which daffodil was better. I think a daffodil with correct pose and one small nick is better than a daffodil that is oblong with some petals on one side shorter than the petals on the other side. I look at the whole daffodil, and consider pose, condition, freshness, substance and texture, stem, and size among other things. I also note that some daffodils are just better than others in that they are silky, neatly round, petals not skewed, cup round, color the way it’s supposed to be, etc. I even look at the stem and the back of the daffodil. In other words, I think judging daffodils is more than looking for the nicks and tears on the display. I like to see standard sizes, and neat collections. I think neatness is one of the reasons that Intermediate daffodils seem to win a lot of purple ribbons they days, in that they are all about all the same size. Neatness can also be how well the display is staged, even if we are not judging the staging or the “boxwood.”
I’d like to have others opinion about judging. Should we determine the best daffodil simply based on number of nicks, tears, etc., or the absence of same? Another touch question, if you have a fresh Div 1 Pink Silk with one small hardly noticable nick, being judged against a Div 4 Cheerfulness that looks like it has had better days in the past, do you chose the Cheerfulness because it has no nicks or do you chose the Pink Silk that is fresh except for on small nick?
I know which one I would chose.
Clay
Clay Higgins
I’m no judge, just a plain old exhibitor, but examples such as what was described below would make me pull out the scale of points:
SCALE OF POINTS JUDGING DAFFODILS
STANDARD DAFFODILS
FORM 25
CONDITION 20
COLOR 15
POSE & STEM 15
SUBSTANCE & TEXTURE 15
SIZE 10
100
HISTORIC DAFFODILS and SPECIES DAFFODILS (DIVISION 13)
CONDITION 40 CONDITION 50
FORM 15 FORM 15
COLOR 15 SUBSTANCE 10
SIZE 10 TEXTURE 5
POSE 5 COLOR 10
STEM 5 POSE 5
SUBSTANCE 5 STEM 5
TEXTURE 5
100 100
That said, in four years of showing and clerking I have seldom seen a judge get out pencil and paper and score two flowers against each other.
In rose shows, the show chair has to have scratch paper available during judging, as rose show judges frequently whip out the scale of points to judge two similar flowers. You see this a lot at the district level, where everything put out has a perfect center, and you need to use other criteria to find out which is the best bloom. And should you enter an arrangement, every entry’s score is tallied and the score sheet is affixed to the entry tag. Daffs and roses are very different flowers, though, and I think it’s a lot easier to identify a superior bloom on sight alone.
As for collections, I am still learning that the collection is judged on its worst flower, so make sure you put 5/12/15/24 good ones in. Assuming everything you have in is blue ribbon quality, I thing staging is very important. Not that judges judge the staging, but proper staging brings out the best in your good flowers, and hides the faults in your less good ones. My wife is in charge of staging collections at shows (Here, honey, do something good with this!), and she is quickly figuring out what to do and what not to do. Several of our collections at Cincy this year looked really good from across the room, but when the flowers were examined closely, all of their many defects were very apparent
Mike Kuduk
Winchester, KY
Michael,
Thanks for your comment. Where you say that you are no judge, just a plain old exhibitor. Let me reverse that. I’m a plain old collections exhbibitor and that loves to exhibit and I also just happen to judge (when asked.) I know the point scale very well as I also Chair a daffodil show.
My point is that I feel that the whole daffodil has to be judged, not just how many nick or tears are on the daffodils. I also agree when it is close on collections, that the point scale has needed to come out from time to time. However, if you have two daffodils that are equal, or similair in all aspects, (which seldom happens), subjectiveness may be the answer. I’ve seen situations where the balloting for best in show keeps coming out as a tie. Sometimes discusstions among the judges have to be used to brake a tie. In other words, I don’t think judging is just the point system either. I think it’s the determination of the best daffodil or the best collection. Of course that may be up for interruptation as well.
clay
Hi Clay,
Wouldn’t it be just dandy if judging could be objective? But what would be the fun of that?
Donna
Michael,
What you said you are learning could be somewhat misleading. Yes, in the ADS, every bloom in the winning collection must score 90 points or more. But, in comparing two or more collections satisfying this criterion, the collection containing the best blooms overall (ie, has the highest point-score across its blooms) is the winner – even if it contains the weakest bloom. And, if the collections are close in quality, then superior staging can be used to decide the winner.
Hi Mike,
Yes your collections looked good from across the room, but so did all of them.
At the convention this year, I had the pleasure of judging with David Jackson. He is a superior judge, but was giving the two ladies on the panel the last say. He had his pad and pencil out and was point scoring. Funny thing was that we two American ladies usually came up with the same conclusion as David did. I do some point scoring when judging, in particular when the two are very close. Usually I do it to myself. Sometimes point scoring will cause an argument especially when the two judges don’t agree on how much to take off for a nick or if you take all five points off for non uniformity on a vase of three. And staging does make average flowers look better.
Donna
Naomi,
Basically, the answer to your question below is "yes" – although it is unlikely that I would point-score the blooms. The collection that has the highest overall value is the winner, unless one of its blooms is below 90.
At 04:23 PM 4/29/2010,
wrote:
Daffodil Friends,
I guess I misunderstood what Naomi was asking.
No, I don’t point score the blooms in a five-stem collection and then add the numbers. Yes, I believe the best collection could include the worst bloom, as long as that bloom is still of blue-ribbon (ie, 90+) quality.
Marilynn,
Yes, a collection is as good as its weakest flower! This statement disallows a collection from being judged weaker than its weakest flower. It might be judged better.
ADS guidelines never said the collection was only as good as its weakest flower, though that was the interpretation taught by many. Such an interpretation would require that a collection with four blooms scoring 98 and one scoring 91 would lose to a collection with five 92-point flowers. Is this reasonable?
Surely there is more to judging a collection than just finding its weakest bloom.
As a collection shower, I agree with Bob. However, that has not always been the case at shows where I have been. I’ve even seen collections where no flower was below 90 but was given a red ribbon with no blue for that class, because it was not “the highest quality.” Whatever that is.
clay
Clay Higgins
