Lynn O'Shaughnessy
This "Judges Profile" for Lynn O'Shaughnessy appeared in the April 2001 issue of the Score Sheet.
“Why don’t you grow something with a flower?”
This is what my husband asked of me shortly after we got married and I brought my rag-tag collection of house plants into our home. So I went to my favorite greenhouse in Williamston, Michigan and discovered a bench of orchids in one of the houses. I left with a few Paphs and the phone number to Hausermanns. That was back in January of 1991. I was hooked.
My time was quite consumed with my flight school and aircraft maintenance shop at the Livingston County Airport when I bought my first orchid so I was content to enroll in the “Orchid of the Month” program with Hausermanns and enjoy my “surprise” every month. I joined AOS and was reading about my new passion in their monthly magazine. About a year later, I decided it was time to become more involved in orchids with a society. I met Ruth Wright through a phone conversation with Ray McCullough and joined both the Ann Arbor and Greater Lansing Orchid Societies.
By now, I had sold my business and was no longer spending every day at the airport. With the extra time and my association with Ruth, I got involved right away in setting up society displays at shows for Ann Arbor. I will have to admit that our first attempts were not that great, but the practice helped us both improve. When Ruth moved to Texas, I took the position of Director with Ann Arbor, a position I held for four years.
My early collection contained a little bit of everything, and a lot of Paphiopedilums. I grew my orchids in a Four Seasons sunroom attached to our house where I enjoyed moderate success in growing and blooming the orchids. By now most of my house plants had been given away and my addiction was filling up the sunroom. Not wanting to curb my appetite for orchids, I began growing some of my collection under lights in my basement. Then in 1997, something happened that would forever change the direction I would take with orchids – I discovered Pleurothallids! In 2000 I moved into my new 21' x 36' greenhouse and I became totally immersed in everything pleurothallid.
At around the same time I discovered pleurothallids, I was still designing and setting up displays for Ann Arbor, but my new passion found me doing my own displays of pleurothallids in a case by 1998. I started with designing my early displays around a small Orchidarium. Today I use a much larger home-built case of my own design. I have won two AOS Show trophies and one Artistic Certificate for my displays.
In 1998 I was asked to be the newsletter editor for the Pleurothallid Alliance quarterly newsletter. Being an artist and already doing another successful newsletter, I accepted the challenge. Today their newsletter has a color insert and has expanded to 12 to 16 pages. I am also the newsletter editor for the Greater Lansing Orchid Society. Most recently, I designed a website for my orchids and for the Pleurothallid Alliance that I hope will be of educational interest as well as informational for the Alliance.
Having a desire to learn and a keen competitive drive, I began to bring my orchids to the Great Lakes Judging Center in 1996. When I received my first award, a CBR on a Pleurothallis breviscapa, I could hardly contain myself. This was exciting to me. I sat in as an observer and continued to bring in my orchids for about two years absorbing what I could before deciding to enter the judging program. I am currently three years into the program and am looking forward to many more. The judges and other people I have met through judging have been great. To date I have received 77 AOS awards. Those who know me know it is easy to find my awards – just look for the clonal name ‘Free Spirit’, named after my aviation business – Free Spirit Aviation.
UPDATE - February 24, 2015
A lot has happened since I wrote this profile back in 2001! I became an accredited judge in 2004. I have served the Great Lakes Judging Center as Fundraising Chair, Center Photographer, Training Coordinator and Vice Chair and loved every minute of it. I chair two of the shows our Center supports (Greater Lansing and Northwestern Michigan) and still do photography for three shows (Michigan, Greater Lansing and Saginaw Valley). I have also served the AOS as National Training 
Coordinator for two years. Now I just enjoy being a judge and helping out where I can. My passion for the Center is teaching and putting together PowerPoint programs. I enjoy the continued learning that it takes to research and do presentations for groups of orchids that I don't normally grow.
I had my Probationary paper titled "Fascinating Lepanthes" published in the Jul/Aug/Sep 2004 issue of Orchid Digest and then again twice more in Orchideeën (a publication from the Netherlands) and Orchideen Journal (a publication from Denmark). I also had "Culture of Masdevallias" published in the Oct/Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Orchid Digest. I had several articles published in Orchids magazine including "A Case Study with MSU Fertilizer" (June 2003), "Pleurothallids on Display" (September 2003), "Specklinia gelida" (May 2008). I wrote an article in Orchids magazine for the column, Nomenclature Notes, titled "Acronia" (September 2007). I also wrote 5 articles in Orchids magazine for the column "Collector's Item" on "Pleurothallis truncata" (January 2011), "Dryadella rodrigoi" (May 2011), "Pleurothallis pectinata" (September 2011), "Barbosella cogniauxiana" (January 2012), and "Serpents and Vultures" (September 2012).
I wrote two articles for an essay contest sponsored by the Mid American Orchid Congress. The first one titled "Annette's First Orchid Show" was about the travels of Masdevallia Annette Hall to an orchid show from the perspective of the orchid. It won first place for that year...2013. The second one was titled "The Problem with Orchids is..." and is about my addiction to orchids.
I like to write...can you tell? I am also a published author (albeit not about orchids) with a chapter in a compilation book titled In the Spirit of Abundance. The title of my chapter is "Bloom Where You are Planted" and is about my journey as a breast cancer survivor.
I won the Carlyle A. Luer Award three times. The first was in 2000 for Masdevallia Tasmanian Devil. The second was in 2001 for Lepanthes aculeata. The third was in 2006 for Masdevallia Setting Sun. The beautiful photo taken by our then center photographer, John Lewis, even made the cover of the January 2003 issue of Orchids when the annual awards were published. I was also awarded a Certificate of Educational Merit by the American Orchid Society for doing an index of pleurothallid literature to organize where literature can be found for this extensive group of orchids. I received the "Orchidist of the Year" trophy from the Greater Lansing Orchid Society for service to the society and the orchid community. The Greater Lansing Orchid Society also awarded me with the Orchid Digest Diamond Award of Excellence in 2010 for my contributions to the society and the number of awards I have won for my plants...which to date is 350. Most of these awards are to plants of the pleurothallid alliance.
I have won 8+ AOS Show Trophies for my case display and society displays that I have set up. For one of them, I also won the Orchid Digest Show Trophy. I have trophies too numerous to count from various orchid shows. At one show I won 
7 different trophies including best in show for my plant of Pleurothallis truncata. Yes, a pleurothallid can win best in show! I also got a CCE of 90 points on the same plant at that show.
I remained the newsletter editor for the Pleurothallild Alliance until 2010 when I handed the reins over to John Leathers. I an still active with the Alliance as their Secretary/Treasurer and webmaster.
I enjoy speaking and have traveled around the U.S. and Canada to speak to orchid societies and groups on various topics of pleurothallids and photography. I even had the honor to speak at the World Orchid Congress in Florida in 2008. My talk was titled "Pleurothallids: Small Flowers, Big Show". I don't travel as much to speak as I used to, but I still enjoy speaking locally and for my center training. I thoroughly enjoy graphics and I love to make a presentation eye-catching and interesting as well as informative.
I enjoy orchid photography and am always seen at orchid shows snapping photos of flowers in the displays. I am a major contributor of photos for Orchid Wiz. Just recently, I have given over 6 gigs of the same photos to the American Orchid Society for their plans to begin using these types of photos. Nearly all of the photos used in the Pleurothallid Alliance publication "Masdevallia and Affiliates" are mine also.
I have enjoyed dabbling in hybridizing a bit and made a few Masdevallia crosses. I have named these crosses (and a number of other crosses from the Orchid Zone with their permission) after Airedale Rescue friends...and sometimes after Airedales. Airedale Rescue is another of my passions.
I have two pleurothallid species named for me by Dr. Luer: Masdevallia lynniana and Acronia lynniana. Stig Dalstrom did a watercolor painting of Masdevallia lynniana for the book "Treasure of Masdevallia". I was fortunate enough to be able to buy the original watercolor and have it hanging on my wall at home. Acronia lynniana is a unique species of Acronia.
What does the future hold for me? The only thing I can say is that it will always involve something to do with orchids. And, yes, I can grow something with a flower on it.
LYNN O’SHAUGHNESSY
ORCHID DIGEST DIAMOND AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
2010
The “Orchid Digest Diamond Award of Excellence”. If there is a member of the Greater Lansing Orchid Society that epitomizes “excellence”, it would have to be Lynn O’Shaughnessy.
An active judge in the American Orchid Society, Lynn has received in excess of 340 AOS awards on her orchids. She has now moved into the echelon of orchid growers who have received more awards than anyone else.
In addition to her huge achievement in growing award-winning plants, she serves our Society month after month helping with our silent auction and for our recent Show, she put the Society on to Facebook.
Congratulations, Lynn, on your many AOS awards!