Chuck McCartney is a fourth-generation South Floridian who has been a life-long orchid enthusiast, but through his longtime membership in the Florida Native Plant Society, he has also become interested in Florida’s bromeliads. Chuck earned a bachelor’s degree in English education from Florida State University. However, except for a short stint as a high school English teacher in Miami, he has been a journalist and editor, working for newspapers in his native Homestead as well as in Hollywood, Florida, where he now lives. He retired in 2009 after nearly 19 years as a copy editor with The Miami Herald’s Broward Edition serving the Fort Lauderdale area. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an editor for the American Orchid Society and has written numerous articles on orchids for AOS publications as well as for California’s Orchid Digest, England’s Orchid Review and publications of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and the Florida Native Plant Society. His special interest is the wild orchids of his native South Florida as well as the Southern Appalachians, and he often speaks on these subjects to orchid societies, native plant groups, garden clubs and natural history organizations.