CSA-Journal-2016-04

The Armacost
& Royston
Letterhead with
a pastoral sketch
of the sprawling
operation.
Document from
P. Gripp's Library
advertising there. A grower named Stewart
posted his first advertisement to sell
plants in December 1946. It is said that
Ernest heard from Joe Hampton that Fred
A. Stewart, an entrepreneur builder with
an expanding private orchid collection, had
purchased the lot next door to his home in
San Gabriel, California to house his orchid
collection. In the frenzy of the boom,
things were happening, and many expanding
hobbies quickly evolved into businesses.
By the next month, the name “Fred
A Stewart” was in an advertisement; Fred
had entered the orchid business. He purchased
a nearby commercial nursery site to
consolidate his new orchid business, making
it the site of Stewart’s Orchids for the
next 50 years. He set about renovating the
establishment, stocking the benches, and
recruiting the staff. It was at this time in
1947 that Ernest Hetherington came over
from Armacost and Royston and joined the
great Frank Fordyce, another war veteran,
also new on the staff at Stewart’s.
The post-war Cymbidium craze in
California continued, and small groups
of people met for dinner before attending
the monthly Cymbidium Society evening
meeting. One of these groups included
Francis Burt Cobb, attorney for Fred Stewart
and long-time orchid hobbyist. Burt
Cobb was often accompanied by his college-age
son Frank Cobb, later founder of
Cobb’s Orchids of Santa Barbara. At that
time Professor Gustav Melquist of UCLA
had just completed work counting chromosome
numbers in orchids (AOS Bulletin,
May 1949). It was recognized that
the great cymbidium parents Alexanderi
‘Westonbirt’, Rosanna ‘Pinkie’, Babylon
‘Castle Hill’, Pauwelsii ‘Compte De Hemptine’,
and others, were in fact tetraploids,
and that new seedlings with these parents
in their background might turn out to produce
superior quality blooms.
Soon after this, Burt Cobb purchased
a cymbidium named Balkis, whose parents,
Alexanderi and Rosana were both
on Melquist’s list of tetraploids. When it
bloomed he took it to a Cymbidum Society
meeting where Ernest Hetherington recog-
Leading the Stewart Dynasty.
L to R: Ernest Heatherington,
Frank Fordyce, and Fred A.
Stewart.
Photo from P. Gripp's Library
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