Authors

Patricia A. Harding

Patricia A. Harding is an orchid enthusiast who enjoys taxonomy issues and explaining the issues to fellow enthusiasts. She has been growing and photographing orchids for three decades.

Since retiring from the work force in the mid 1990s, Patricia travels extensively to study and photograph orchids in the wild. She also speaks frequently on the topic, and is an accredited American Orchid Society judge in the Pacific Northwest Judging Center.

Patricia combines her loves of taxonomy and teaching in her writing, which is based on literature research as well as reviewing orchid specimens or their photographs, sorting them and finding a systematic way to share what she has learned about them.

Her goal is to write books and articles describing discrete families of orchids and providing pictures of the species contained so that others can identify their plants successfully, but also to present a basis so that in the future people will not have to sort through the confusion that surrounds these rare plants.

Patricia holds degrees in botany and medicine.