With review and comments from the Media Programs Committee, I have completed a new ADS program titled “Examining Exhibition Daffodils.” It is a pair of PDF files. One file has many photos that show various faults or flaws in daffodils. The other file is a script containing commentary about the daffodils in the photos. The purpose is to help new exhibitors become more aware of the defects that detract from the beauty or perfection of a flower. It may also be useful to student judges. The program does not cover point scoring since point scoring is a bit subjective and since a photo of a flower is no substitute for seeing the flower itself. The files may be freely downloaded from the ADS web server. You can find the hyperlinks to the files on the references and resources page at
http://daffodilusa.org/references/references.html#mediaprograms
This program is a follow-on to a program released last year titled “Show Your Daffodils!” This is a program for new exhibitors that covers the grooming and staging of daffodils but that did not cover assessing which flowers were good enough to exhibit. This program is not in the form of a PDF file. Since it contains segments showing the grooming of daffodils, it is a video. An NTSC (i.e., not PAL) DVD is for sale at the ADS web store, but if you have broadband Internet access, space for a 92 MByte file, an an application for viewing .mp4 files, you can retrieve the 53 minute video from
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87784382/Show_Your_Daffodils-Cellular-Low.mp4
Most current and immediate past generation mobile devices can play .mp4 files like this one. Some desktop and laptop web browsers can also play .mp4 files. Unlike the program showing flawed daffodils, this is a more encouraging and optimistic program to inspire the new exhibitor. After all, this is not the program where we want to show that nearly every daffodil is flawed!
A flawed daffodil
But how many points would this daffodil lose if the green streaks on the back were in a symmetrical pattern?
Loyce McKenzie
Love you, Loyce McKenzie!
I think that if the flower were an historic and entered in the historic classes, you would not remove too many points from it since the primary criteria for historics is symmetry. Few historic doubles bloom without green on the back petals. Never thought about green on the back being symmetrical. Don’t think it usually is, but an interesting thought.
Donna
Kirby,
Your video was very nicely done…very informative. Thanks so much for taking on this project.
Lynn Slackman
I doubt that there’s a short answer to Loyce’s question. I have seen star shaped, symmetric green patterns on the back of doubles, so it’s not a hypothetical question. It may depend on your definition of perfection (which might be that green backs are a serious defect regardless of symmetry) or on your concept of beauty (which is in the eye of the beholder). Furthermore, it would also depend on how you allocated the 15 points for color. Let’s give it a try, and I think you’ll see why the new program avoided suggesting how many points to deduct and why we want a consensus of three judges and not just a single judge to assess a flower.
If you’re of the mind that green backs are intolerable, you’ll probably deduct at least ten point for the flower in this picture and maybe only 8 points if the green were in a symmetric pattern. A second way of judging would say the 15 points should be divided about half and half between the front and the back of the flower. If we allocate 7 points to the back, the you might deduct 6 or 7 for the flower in this picture and possibly only 4 or 5 if the green pattern were neat and symmetric. A third point of view would be that the front of the flower is much more important than the back so that the allocation should be 10 points for the front and 5 for the back, giving you a narrower range of points to work from ugly to beautiful. In this case you might deduct 4 or 5 points for this flower and 3 or 4 for a symmetric green pattern. In these three scenarios, the first judge is trying to look at the flower as a whole and assessing a penalty on the basis of how much the color defect detracts from the beauty or perfection of the flower . The third judge is trying to be as rational and objective as possible so that the point penalty can be explained or at least rationalized. The second judge tried to split the difference. All three viewpoints are justifiable, so the answer to Loyce’s question is “the range 3 to 8.” This is obviously not very specific, but it illustrates the trickiness of point scoring and why such issues need to be discussed in judging schools.
Loyce’s question also reminded me that I have seen bulbocodiums with neat green streaks down the center and back of its perianth segments. In this case, the green pattern is quite symmetric. However, the perianth is a small fraction of the floral mass, so the green is almost unnoticeable. I’m not aware of any situation where a bulbocodium was penalized for green stripes on the backs of the perianth segments. So, were the judges being careless or were they conceding that this “fault” did not actually detract from the beauty of the flower?