Monthly Meeting

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.

This month’s speaker is Arnold Gum who will talk on ‘Wild Orchids of Southern France’.  His presentation will survey the different orchids encountered in a variety of day hikes through Provence, most with orchids in mind, with a bit of discussion about the habitat and the travels, laced with a bit of French scenery, food and background.

Arnold Gum
While the Provence region in the South of France is known for its delicious food, a broad variety of scrumptious cheeses, and fine wine, it is also one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world.  This is indeed ironic, as humans are not well known for idle co-existence with nature.  However, the coast of Provence has some of the earliest known sites of human habitation in Europe. Primitive stone tools dated approximately 1 million years BC were found between Monaco and Menton and remains of Roman ruins and old castles are common.  Thus, it was with some delight that Arnold discovered that, amid the ruins of old civilizations, there are a host of butterflies, wildflowers, and orchids.  The sheer number and variety of species speaks to the tenacity and resilience of nature!  The orchids start blooming early, perhaps around March, each species blooming in a small slice of perhaps two weeks in any given area.  The last bloomers may bloom as late as August or September!  That means that the serious orchid lover needs to visit Provence multiple times to see all of the different orchid species in bloom!  The orchids in the presentation consist of photos taken in two brief slices of time, once in the mid-June time frame and again, on a return trip to hunt for Ophrys, in early May.  What Arnold found was nothing short of astounding.  Ophrys were so thick that you could not avoid walking on them!  Quite the sight, when you are used to the somewhat barren, dry Southern California landscape.    Read more »