I have no doubt that orchids, like all living things, have a defense mechanism against outside dangers. In us we call it the immune system. They undoubtably have something similar. I have been told that stressed plants exhibited the virus which then subsequently seemed to disappear. Or physical evidence there of, not the chemical test. My plant is a good example. At one time evidence of virus, now no evidence of virus. Could be nothing else other than stress, a couple of years ago, allowing the virus to show itself and now is dormant again. What this illustrates is that there may be many more virused plants in all of our collections which, if in excellent health otherwise, will not show any signs of it. If one would test every plant in a large collection, there would be a significant number which would test positive. Nick

These comments are directed towards the the question: "Also, how do you clean a virused plant using cuttings? My experience of virus, admittedly not any which affect roses, has been that they are generally systemic," ------------------------- It is common to read in the general rose virus reviews something along the lines of the following: "Cuttings from an infected plant will be infected - no matter what portion of the plant they were taken from. The disease is systemic: The entire plant is infected, whether visible signs of the disease are present, or not." see as one example: http://www.goldcoastrose.org/ A Cornell 1998 rose virus research paper (not in the cited abstract: http://www.actahort.org/books/234/234_53.htm The statement is in the "must be paid for" full paper.) stated: "Virus distribution in apple, plum, and cherry trees is irregular" (they then give 1963, 1973, 1984, and 1986 references.) it is likely that virus distribution in rose is also irregular. This explanation appears to be reasonable since virus inoculated plants frquently exhibited some shoots expressing no symptons. It is possible that the virus has not been distributed throught the plant." ------------------- Since then, one French http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1094/PHYTO.2000.90.5.522 and one Polish study http://150.254.175.4/ptfit/pdf/PP38a/PP38_091-098.pdf have confired the irregular distributions. -------------------- The French reported that: "A total of 89% (59 out of 66) of Anna stems was entirely PNRSV negative when axillary shoots from these stems developed after the decapitation of the floral stem, after the development of cuttings, or grown in vitro were tested by ELISA. ELISA tests of leaves from these stems were all negative. Since IC-RT-PCR conducted in parallel on all the explants from three (out of seven) of these stems also were negative, we suspect that these stems were virus free, even if they belonged to infected plants, or that the viral titer was very low in the stems." http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1094/PHYTO.2000.90.5.522 ---------------------------- Thus, the French reported that they suspect that they were able to obtain clean plants from cuttings (as determined by the use of ELISA or PCR). They leave the door open that a more sensitive method may find a low amount of infection. ---------------------------------- This is what was reported concerning California Davis ROSE VIRUS experience: "Oddly enough, one way they eliminate virii is by clonal propagation. Simply put, if you culture enough buds (~100) some small number of them (two or three maybe) will be virus free. The drawback is space, labor and the need to index all the test plants." http://www.rosebreeders.org/forum/read.php?2,38492,38492#msg-38492 See the following thread for a discussion of the possibilities of cleaning cuttings in a hot climate. Here is a link that might be useful: garden web thread on possibilities of cleaning cuttings

Hi Carol, I do it in Picasa, just choose however many pictures you want 2, 4 or more and then send it to collage..then you arrange your pictures and just enlarge them to fit the collage box..so simple even I can do it!!..no extra software needed. Basically, I love Picasa except for the nasty little habit it has of when you send pictures to your albums they normally go to the end of the album..sometimes it makes a mistake and they end up somewhere in the middle of the albums and throws off the sequence and that is what messes up my pictures sometimes in these posts.. I go back to check and there is a different picture there..very frustrating since you can't at that time fix it..if you move one, they all get messes up... But since I have about 7,000 pictures, (not all hippies) I'm not going to change at this point..it doesn't happen all that often... You can also write text on the picture, very simple... Donna

CleanEffects ultimate users guide. And tips. The CleanEffects air filter is the best but only if you follow these handy do it yourself tips I've learned installing them in a few houses. Okay first off I will reply to the guy who said the filtering blinking green light on the indicator panel did not blink when using his fan 24/7 question. The green blinking indicator light only blinks when the filter is fully functional and will stop blinking and be solid when in warm-up mode or waiting for the blower to start up if the blower is set to auto. The filter light does blink/turn on when using the fan only and/or when the A/C is on when wired correctly by the installer. (read on for alternate solution) Okay now for the tips i've learned & want to pass on since I really like this filter and have one in my house and installed one in my moms house recently aswell. You will need a strong spray nozzle for your home water hose or one of those small electric plug in water pressure cleaners to spray down the plastic coils every 4 to 6 months because the really dont get very clean with a vacuum cleaning only the pre-filter can be cleaned with the vacuum. Vacuum usually once a month will do for the pre-filter. So plan for this in advance as you will need one or the other. (strong water hose nozzle or small electirc pessure cleaner). The front door has two metal pins that slip into notches on the unit. When these metal pins dont line up during install they can get bent or come bent during shipping. This is the cause of the door being excessively hard to close on some installs. To fix this simply bend these netal pins a little to the sides and the small bottom feet down or up so they line up nicely and the door will open and close smoothly & make cleaning the pre-filters & plastic coils a breeze. Next I have noticed that some air handlers are so strong that they can pull the plastic pre-filter that comes with the CleanEffects unit within range of the electric metal coils and cause the coil to turn off. To solve this problem noted by several posters that noticed the coils keep turning off causeing the yellow fault lights to blink or the green filter light to stay solid, you can hang a small weight off of the pre-filters center frame work to pull it away from the coils. a small string with a weight handing off of it can do the job. I used some plastic coated metal cloths hangers to form some small hooks that i use to pull the pre-filter down away from the coils. They hang perfectly from the pre-filters plastic support arms. This will solve most of the problems with coils that turn off to what seems to be randomly when its really do to some air handlers being to strong and pulling the filter close to the metal coils and causing coil faults. I love my CleanEffects Trane air filter and I hope the above tips solve a lot of confusion thats going on out there. The filter really works great once the above ajustments are made and looked for. (I have contacted Trane with the above tweaks & hopefully they can tweak the plastic pre-filter that seems to be the cause of many of the troubles being reported.) But dont wait your health is to important & the CleanEffects system really is a great air cleaner even if a little quirky its worth having NOW & not worth putting off until later since its so easy to tweak. =) Feel free to post questions here as i will check up on this post from time to time. Or email me at RikiiTikii at yahoo d o t com signed, Ricky of Miami p.s. If you ever look up at the CleanEffects from underneath when the A/C is on at night you will see an amazing Tesla coil like Electrical light show, it really is that futuristic & how youll know its truly working properly.