Monthly Meeting

Francisco Miranda

We welcome Francisco Miranda as our guest speaker this month. Francisco’s presentation will focus on cattleya species and their habitats and his talk is titled "The genus Cattleya in Brazil".  Cattleya species can be found throughout Brazil and Francisco will show examples from most of the major regions where they occur.  

Francisco was born in Rio de Janeiro and he has been growing orchids since 1979, the same year he received his degree in Biology.  He began his taxonomic studies of the orchid family in 1981. In 1985, he completed a Master’s Degree and his thesis “Section Cattleyodes of the genus Laelia”.  

Francisco has made frequent field trips to study the habitats of Brazilian orchids, resulting in many new described species.  He has authored two books and several scientific papers.  In 1996, he served as the Program Chairman for the 15th World Orchid Conference in Rio de Janiero.   Read more »

Peter TobiasThe Palomar Orchid Society is pleased to welcome Peter Tobias as our guest speaker this month. He will be giving a talk on "Traveling in Brazil with the Orchid Conservation Alliance". Peter is a member of the SDCOS and also President of the Orchid Conservation Alliance (OCA), which he co-founded in 2006 with some of his friends. In the past, Peter has served as the chairman of the San Diego County Orchid Society’s Conservation Committee.  Peter will first present an overview of OCA, followed by a discussion of  the trip taken in Spring 2014 with OCA to the Atlantic Rainforest and the Chapada Diamantina National Park in Brazil to see orchids growing in the wild.

Peter began growing orchids as a hobby in Chicago during the early 1970s with a white phalaenopsis orchid. After moving to Encinitas in 1980, his hobby really “bloomed.” His collection of primarily species orchids is mostly grown outdoors.

Peter is visiting investigator and associate professor of immunology and microbial science at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. He is a member of the San Diego County Orchid Society and a founding member of the the society’s Conservation Committee in 1991.   Read more »

Ron ParsonsWe are fortunate to be able to welcome back Ron Parsons as guest speaker for our February Meeting. Ron will be speaking about his experience traveling to Columbia in August of 2014 and the many orchids he encountered there. His trip included visits to nurseries, forest reserves, and a national park as well as three days at the Medellín orchid show and botanical gardens. All in all he saw and took pictures of nearly 120 native orchid species in bloom in the wild, as well as hundreds of others at the show and nurseries.

Ron Parsons has been growing orchids for going on 40 years and has been interested in and has grown species orchids for most of that time. He loves to photograph orchids and other flowers whenever he can, whether it be in collections or trips to see them in nature. Ron’s collection of photographs includes approximately 40,000 digital images, most of which are orchids, and a slide library of flower photographs that exceeds 100,000 images. He has published about 2500 photos, which have appeared in magazines, periodicals, journals, and books.  

As an author, Ron has co-authored three books with Mary Gerritsen: 'Masdevallias, Gems of the Orchid World', 'Calochortus, Mariposa Lilies and their Relatives' , and a two-volume set titled 'A Compendium of Miniature Orchid Species'. The last book has nearly 1200 pages, 1800 photographs, and features more than 500 species.

Kay Klausing and daughter IsaWe are delighted to have as our first speaker of 2015, Dr. Kay Klausing, 1st VP of the San Diego County Orchid Society.  Kay’s talk is entitled ‘Rupicolous Laelias’ and will cover many aspects of this subgroup and their culture, including distribution, habitat, climate, classification, acclimating and growing (watering, fertilizing, potting, repotting, pests). 

Kay has been growing orchids for almost 30 years. His collection consists almost exclusively of species plants with a focus on the Cattleya alliance plus a few sprinklings of  Oncidium, Phalaenopisis, Masdevallia, Dendrobium, Catasetinae, Paphiopedilum as well as others. He maintains three small greenhouses (cool, intermediate, and warm) plus an outdoor growing area for his collection.

Some of the plants grown by Kay have been awarded and his displays at various orchid shows have won first place ribbons several times. 

By training, Kay is a molecular biologist and he holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Konstanz in Germany.  He currently works at the very successful San Diego biotech firm Illumina.

This month’s plant table will be supplied by Rex Foster Orchids.