1 February, 2017 EYES ON ORCHIDS BATON ROUGE ORCHID SOCIETY Eyes On Orchids President’s Message VOLUME 59, ISSUE 2–FEBRUARY,2017 Meeng February 15 - 7 p.m. - Burden Center - 4560 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge, Inside this Issue President’s Message 1 Program 1 Minutes 2 Bring to Meeting 2 Meeting Schedule 3 Orchid Feng Shui 3 Speaker’s Bio Cont. 4 Name an Orchid 4 January Program 5 Orchid Seeds 5 January Blooms 6 Green Growers 8 Birthdays 8 Committee News 9 Sad News 9 AOS Webinars 9 Show Schedule 9 Virus in Cattleyas 11 Notes from the 14 Orchidnut February Program - Understanding Orchid Corsages by Dennis Wollard, Ph.D, of Acadiana Orchid Society See President’s Message, Page 2 I think it was in 1961 that I (Dennis) started growing orchids. My parents asked what I want- ed for my birthday, and I said an orchid. They said I had to find a place to order it. The plant was Cattleya Crystal Palace from Rod McClean, San Francisco. Naturally I could not wait until it arrived, in bud and in a gift box. It was the most beautiful orchid in the world. I was hooked Continued page 4 Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Mardi Gras! We continue to have various tempera- tures, which will keep us busy for the next 4-6 weeks, as we try to maintain the conditions of our greenhouses and growing areas. I am constantly removing a few windows from my greenhouse, then having to re-insert them when the night temperatures fall too low, all for the addiction of orchids. At our meeting in January, I circulated a list of out of town shows with dates, including our July BROS show. We need volunteers to set up and take down, along with volunteers to make our local show a success. The next out of town show will be Calcasieu in Lake Charles on April 21-23. There are a couple of areas in which we could use some assistance. We need members to help bring refreshments. Also, Danna and I could use some help with the newsletter. If anyone sees interesting articles that we could use, please share with us. If any member would be interested in helping compose the newsletter, we would be grateful. Last month we had a great meeting. Our member Zach Goodnow gave a very interesting presentation on terrarium orchids, titled ‘Orchids Under Glass’. I was intrigued by this presentation, and members followed up with many ques- tions. We then auctioned some orchid vases and raffled other orchid memorabilia donated by James Jeansonne. Bob Lank was a very entertaining auctioneer. We also had a great selection of foster orchids.
Transcript
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February, 2017
E Y E S O N O R C H I D S
B A T O N R O U G E
O R C H I D S O C I E T Y Eyes On Orchids
President’s Message
V O L U M E 5 9 , I S S U E 2 – F E B R U A R Y , 2 0 1 7
Meeting February 15 - 7 p.m. - Burden Center - 4560 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge,
Inside this Issue
President’s Message 1 Program 1 Minutes 2 Bring to Meeting 2 Meeting Schedule 3 Orchid Feng Shui 3
Speaker’s Bio Cont. 4
Name an Orchid 4
January Program 5
Orchid Seeds 5
January Blooms 6 Green Growers 8 Birthdays 8 Committee News 9
Sad News 9
AOS Webinars 9
Show Schedule 9
Virus in Cattleyas 11 Notes from the 14 Orchidnut
February Program - Understanding Orchid Corsages by Dennis Wollard, Ph.D, of Acadiana Orchid Society
See President’s Message, Page 2
I think it was in 1961 that I (Dennis) started growing orchids. My parents asked what I want-ed for my birthday, and I said an orchid. They said I had to find a place to order it. The plant was Cattleya Crystal Palace from Rod McClean, San Francisco. Naturally I could not wait until it arrived, in bud and in a gift box. It was the most beautiful orchid in the world. I was hooked
Continued page 4
Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Mardi Gras! We continue to have various tempera-tures, which will keep us busy for the next 4-6 weeks, as we try to maintain the conditions of our greenhouses and growing areas. I am constantly removing a few windows from my greenhouse, then having to re-insert them when the night temperatures fall too low, all for the addiction of orchids. At our meeting in January, I circulated a list of out of town shows with dates, including our July BROS show. We need volunteers to set up and take down, along with volunteers to make our local show a success. The next out of town show will be Calcasieu in Lake Charles on April 21-23. There are a couple of areas in which we could use some assistance. We need members to help bring refreshments. Also, Danna and I could use some help with the newsletter. If anyone sees interesting articles that we could use, please share with us. If any member would be interested in helping compose the newsletter, we would be grateful. Last month we had a great meeting. Our member Zach Goodnow gave a very interesting presentation on terrarium orchids, titled ‘Orchids Under Glass’. I was intrigued by this presentation, and members followed up with many ques-tions. We then auctioned some orchid vases and raffled other orchid memorabilia donated by James Jeansonne. Bob Lank was a very entertaining auctioneer. We also had a great selection of foster orchids.
Minutes of January Meeting President Valerie Creehan open our meeting at 7 pm. Visitors Dr. and Mrs. Jorge Isaza were welcomed, and Dr. Isaza became a new member.
Announcements were as follows: Nancy Morrison is collecting recipes of dishes prepared for our great Christmas party in December. Please send her recipes of the dishes you brought so that we can share them with all the members. Speaking of Christmas, Valerie hosted the party at her home and everyone had a wonderful time. Chip and the Publicity/Membership Committee are initiating a train-ing program of local nursery staff to better acquaint them with taking care of their orchid plant stock as well as answering customers ques-tions. Some of those invited to attend work at stores such as Lowe’s, Home Depot, LA Nursery, Trader Joe’s, Clegg’s, as well as others. These are held at Burden at 9:00am to 10:00 on each Wednesday in February beginning with the 1st and ending with the 22nd. All members and the general public are invited to attend. Valerie passed around a list of the orchid shows for this year. We sorely need members to pitch in to help set up and take down displays at the end of the shows. Volunteers are especially need for the out of town shows. This is a great learning opportunity. Bring suggestions for a title for our coming BROS show this July. If your suggestion is picked you will receive a beautiful orchid. James Jeasonne displayed his many orchid vases and other memora-bilia collected over the years. Bob Lank did an awesome job auctioning the orchid memorabilia to those present. January Birthday orchids went to Mary Kellogg, Bob Lank, and Terry Rehn. We were treated to a presentation by member Zach Goodnow on growing orchids in terrariums called “Orchids under Glass”. The unique-ness of this project allows Zach to control lighting, temperature, humidy – air flow, watering and fertilization. His biggest obstacle in this initia-tion was balancing all of these important conditions to allow healthy or-chids to grow. Zach brought several examples of the material he uses as well as some of his miniature orchids. Everyone enjoyed this informative presentation. We had a short break then raffle plants were awarded. Nora Connor picked plants to discuss from the two bloom tables. The meeting was adjourned at 9 pm.
Patty Granier
Secretary
We will be doing “Hands On” corsage mak-
ing this month. Please bring flowers, filler
material, scissors, wire cutters, florist tape,
and corsage ribbon with you to the meeting.
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In the month of February, BROS is holding orchid training workshops. This training consists of 4 one hour presentations for nursery, Lowes, Trader Joe’s, and Home Depot employees. The sessions are being held at the Burden Center on each Wednesday in February (1, 8,15, and 22) at 9:00 AM. These educational lectures were originated and organized by BROS member, Chip Thompson, and are open to the public as well as our members. The initial workshop was successful, and we are looking forward to the other three sessions.
Our February program will be given by Dennis Wollard from the Acadian Orchid Society on ‘Understanding Orchid Corsages’ and will be a hands-on program. We will be taking Dennis out to dinner at 5:00 PM prior to the meeting. Members who want to join us for dinner can contact Randy Johnson or me for the restaurant TBD. Members will be eating Dutch. Our meeting is on the 15th, 7:00 PM, at the Burden Center. Bring your bloomed plants and enjoy our program on corsages.
Valerie Creehan President
Meeting Schedule
Green Growers - April 12
Meeting - April 19
Program - Cattleyas by Courtney Hackney
Orchids for Seniors - April 24 - Field Trip to
Green Growers - March 8
Meeting - March 15
Program - TBA
Orchids for Seniors - March 27 - TBA
March, 2017
Green Growers - May 10 Meeting - May 17 Program TBA Orchids for Seniors - May 22 - Field Trip to
April, 2017 May, 2017
An Orchid Feng Shui
Lesson
Orchids, classical Feng Shui flowers, are a symbol of fertility. An orchid plant or flower at home is believed to be a symbol of perfection in almost all fields in life. Orchids, according to Feng Shui, are flowers of abundance, perfection, spiritual growth, purity and beauty! Have an orchid plant or flow-ers in the house.
From: Satellite Communications Ltd - December 15, 2016
It’s not really HOARDING if you have COOL STUFF - like lots of orchids
President’s Message Cont.
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Program from Page 1 on orchids at that time. Growing up in a town of twenty thousand I found two others who grew orchids. Since they were in their golden years, they took this sixth or seventh grader under their maternal care and shared many orchids with me. Speaking of orchids, I still have the first orchid Cattleya Crystal Palace in my col-lection, so one can say that was the gift that keeps on giving. While teaching at UL Lafayette I loved to give that as an example of a tropical perennial plant. It would take several minutes for one of the students to raise their hand and say something like “that is older than the students in the class.” Several years later I was featured in the Andrews High School Newspaper for growing the orchid my date wore to the prom; and as a result, the same article came out in the Andrews County News paper. This background landed my first regular part time job. I went to Andrews Floral to purchase some corsage making supplies, and the owner asked if I was the one written up in the newspaper. She was looking for a driver for after school deliv-eries, and I said yes. She not only allowed me to make deliveries but also taught me the florist design work because I wanted to learn. I worked there for some three years while I finished high school and two year years while attending junior college.
Upon transferring to Texas Tech I worked there for two florists part time. Upon en-tering graduate school I started working part time at Coles Florist in Baton Rouge and was on the Louisiana State judges team to evaluate hand work for students who wanted to earn their Louisiana State Florist License. Early experiences at LSU Horticulture were interesting. Mr. Black-well was in charge of the rose garden and was responsible for making arrangements when important people were ill or the department head need to impress a digni-tary. I went with Mr. Blackwell to pick roses and saw how he was struggling with the arrangements and corsages, so I said I can do that for you. He said go ahead and after I made the items, he went to the department head to tell him that I could do florist work. Well after the depart-ment head and all the secretaries in-spected my work, I had the job until I graduated. I continued to work part time on holidays after commencing employ-ment at UL Lafayette. Well I would only work at nights or weekends during holi-days. I finally realized it was not worth the extra long hours of very hard work on holidays with minimum pay so I, if you want to say, retired from the florist in-dustry. I am very proud to say it taught me a trade, and I was able to learn a lit-tle pocket change through out the years.
Wouldn’t it be cool to have an orchid named after yourself or a friend or family member? If you’re lucky enough to have a friend who hybridizes them, that could happen and frequently does. For in-stance, several people in the BROS have plants named after them. But if you don’t know a hybridizer, did you know you can name an orchid af-ter someone - or yourself? You can choose from a shortlist of orchid hybrids either from a photograph or a farm, and after
some paperwork involving the Orchid So-ciety Of South East Asia and the Royal Horticultural Society in the U.K. (the world authority for registering orchids), you could be the namesake to an orchid. A successful registration will also yield an official ‘birth cer-tificate’ to remem-ber the moment by.
Name an Orchid After Yourself!
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For our January program our BROS member, Zach Goodnow gave his power point presentation on terrarium orchids. He discussed various miniature orchids
used in terrariums along with the advantages, disadvantages, lighting, temperature, and pests and diseases. This program was most interesting and
enjoyed by all members.
Progress on Valerie’s C. Granier’s Blue Dream ‘Grand Susan’ - After struggling with this yellowing plant for a couple of years, I wrote to Sue Bottom last March and repotted the plant in the fall, removing a rotted portion. The orchid looked much greener and bloomed for the first time for me in December.
Orchid seeds are the world's tiniest. A single seed capsule of some or-chid species contains nearly 4 million seeds, each weighing just a 35-millionth of an ounce and measuring a 300th of an inch long. How is that possible? An orchid seed consists of an infinitesi-mal embryo surrounded by an ultra-thin seed coat that's a single cell thick. And, as you might have guessed, there are no nu-trients in an orchid seed to sustain the embryo. Each dust-like seed's fate depends on a passing
breeze transporting it in-to the presence of certain fungi that enable germi-nation.
The Ledger - January 19, 2017, Lakeland, FL. Information extracted from article by Charles Reyn-olds, Ledger Corre-spondent
A little about orchid seeds
Auction of James
Jeansonne’s Orchid
memorabilia at Janu-
ary meeting by Bob
Lank,
Auctioneer
Extraordinaire!!
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Angreacum Crestwood ‘Tomorrow Star’ The plant on the left was a keiki from the one on the right. The keiki was given to
Valerie Creehan from James Jeansonne three years ago.
Blc. Chinese Beauty ‘Orchid House’ C. loddigesii (‘Carina’ x ‘Tony Bos’) x self
Meetings are at 7 p.m. at the home of Gene & Thelma Berg
425 Nelson Dr. Come for good fellowship,
refreshments, learning - and door prizes.
Happy February Birthday
to the Following:
Dana Owens 2/3 Zach Goodnow 2/3 Carolyn Collins 2/12 Charmaine Mocsary 2/14 David Coco 2/20 Ann Dugas 2/20 Danna Spayde 2/28
Be sure to come to the meeting to get your birthday orchid gift. Must
be present to get it.
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Upcoming AOS Webinars
Committee News
Publicity/membership
program
The Publicity/Membership Committee did not meet in February so that mem-bers could attend the workshops for garden center staff to evaluate how they were received. The Committee’s next meeting will be on March 1 at 11 a.m. at Hunan’s Chinese Restaurant on S. Sherwood Forest. If you would like to join in our efforts and receive meeting reminders, let me know and I’ll put you on the mailing list. The Program Committee meets on the second Saturday each month at 8 a.m. at Burden Center. It would also welcome participation from other members. Contact Patty Granier to get on their email reminder list.
February 21, 8:30 PM and March 14, 8:30 PM (EST): Greenhouse Chats with Ron McHatton. Ron will discuss a variety of topics on orchid culture based on question submitted by at-tendees. Feb. Chat: send questions to [email protected] by the 19th. Regis-tration link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9087761951054886147.
For March Chat: send questions to [email protected] by March 12th. Reg-istration link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7136953445473612291.
Sad News
Former long time BROS member Al-da Guercio passed away December 13, 2016, following a brief illness. Funeral services were held at Greenoaks Funer-al Home on Saturday, December 17, 2016. Alda was born January 25, 1921, in Scalea, Italy and came to America in 1928 as a child when her parents set-tled in Baton Rouge. She graduated from Baton Rouge High School and at-tended LSU and worked at Exxon Chem-ical for 40 years. She married Sam A. everything. Alda was an active member of the Baton Rouge Orchid Society for many years, and her husband served as president several years.
Date: Show:
April 21,22,23 - Calcasieu/Lake Charles June 2,3,4 - NOOS/New Orleans June 9,10,11 - Acadian OS/Lafayette July 7,8,9 - BROS/Baton Rouge Fall - Date TBA CLOS/Alexandria At the meeting there will be a sheet for members to sign up for the Show for which they would like to volunteer. Vol-unteers are needed to set up the displays on Friday and take down on Sunday.
Our display at the January Show in Gautier had to be canceled because not enough people volunteered to help. We don’t want that to happen for any of the others listed above. And, of course, everyone is needed to make our own Show in July successful! You’d be surprised how much you can learn about orchids by attending a show and especially by clerking. Not to mention that you get first crack at the plants for sale!! Always a bo-nus.
2017 Show Schedule
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Taken From the December 2015 ORCHIDS
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Next Meeting is February 27, 2017
Independence Park at 10 a.m.
Orchids for Seniors Supplement
Our first meeting of 2017 was great fun. We had a good turnout, and we all en-joyed catching up on how everyone was doing since we hadn’t gotten together in so long. We discussed our plans for the coming year and ideas for programs and field trips. The group would like to have an-other program on terrariums by Angela Wall who did one for us a couple of years ago. I will contact her about coming again. Mary Jo Kellogg has invited us to visit her place again as she has re-done her greenhouses and has lots more orchids. That will be a good field trip for us. Of course, if we want to have lunch at the Dinner Bell, which we do, we’ll have to change our meeting day because Dinner Bell isn’t open on Mondays. We’ll work on that. We haven’t been to Pat Huval’s in quite awhile either so I’ll see about ar-ranging a trip there. We also decided that we’d like to place a group order for orchids with Car-mela again. That’s something else we haven’t done in a good while. I’ll watch their specials for the best deal we can get. We’ve always gotten very nice plants from them. The rest of the meeting we spent dis-cussing various aspects of orchid care. I showed the group some useful and inex-
pensive tools that I’ve gotten from Har-bor Freight that are useful in cleaning plants for re-potting. We had a short discussion on Oncidi-um orchids and their culture, since they are becoming more commonly seen in stores. Lately I have gotten quite a few of them in my pick-ups from Trader Joes. I had enough of them for everyone to take one to try. Sometimes they don’t seem to do very well in our climate. Since they’re becoming more common, we need to learn how to grow them and compare notes on our methods. We also had an interesting discussion of an alternative method of growing or-chids called the “Water Culture Method” and the “Partial Water Culture Method”. I had hoped to show some YouTube vide-os on the subject but was unable to get online so we just talked about it. Since learning about this Water Cul-ture method, I have experimented with it a little and brought my “experiments” for distribution to the group to try.
As I write this, I have only a vague no-tion of what our February program will be. So we’ll call it a “Mystery Program”. I’ll think of something - just don’t know what right now, as my life has been a lit-tle frantic lately. See y’all in February for the “Mystery Orchid Program”.
