* Posted by hopefulauthor z5IL (hopefulauthor@sbcglobal.net) on Fri, Oct 26, 12 at 13:45 ---- TB...sounds like you've travelled a LOT! Must be fascinating. You've posted beautiful pictures of adult plants/trees, etc...Wish I could travel..:) We're most taken during vacation? ----- Toni, I wished I could travel from an early age, and then I did. Major undertakings were spending 4 years travelling in Europe. And also did 3 years living in a remote part of Arnhem Land with Aborigines (the only whiteman around for 100's of kilometres). Got around a bit in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Criss-crossed Australia so many different ways, and I do a lot of trekking in remote and national park areas. It's all there to be experienced, but there are 'penalties' along with the 'payoffs'. Humidity, or Relative Humidity (RH) when expressed as a percentage means that is the amount of water in the air compared to the amount that air could absorb. So if a certain amount of air is capable of holding (in vapour form) say 1 litre of water but it only has 0.5 litres, then RH is 50%. IE, it's holding half the amount of water it's capable of holding. When temperature goes up the air's capacity to hold water also goes up. Temperatures down and water holding capacity goes down. So the same amount of water in air at different temperatures will have a different RH. During winter when temperature go down RH would rise when actual water content of air remains the same. When your house is heated, the air that's got the actual same quantity of water in it as outside, "becomes drier" (lower RH) because the temperature is higher. The house heating raises the capacity of the air to absorb water. Plants respond more to RH than they do to actual water content of air.

Once virused always virused even if symptoms lessen or seem to disappear with new growth (environmental stress seems to make them express more strongly). Theoretically you could spread virus by smoking around the plants, but practically I wouldn't worry about it. If it was common all the orchids in every smoker's collection would be virused after 20-30 years. Another of your orchids is probably virused it is just as dangerous if not more so than smoking around your plants. The temperature of the burning tobacco kills the virus in the smoke, but loose tobacco might be a problem. Tobacco mosaic viruses have different strains such that the tobacco infecting strain might not infect orchids. If you do have other virused non-orchid plants (like your tobacco plant) you would want to get rid of them too just to be safe. They probably look and grow crappy anyway. You do not have to burn the orchid, just toss it. The local dump is far enough away that you will be safe. Tossing it seems difficult but once it is done you feel better, and have more room.

LOL! I love Janet's description of Edna Spalding. After three years, I don't have any problems culling seedlings either. If I don't like it the first bloom season...it goes straight in the garbage can. This year, for the first time, I even threw away some unbloomed seedlings. They were weak looking plants, with skimpy foliage and had not multiplied beyond a single fan. I thought long and hard about it...and decided I just don't have the room, or the time, or the inclination to baby weak seedlings. Even if it did bloom next year and I absolutely loved the flower...I still wouldn't want it if it's going to be a weak plant...so why torture myself? Off with their heads! ;-) Kathy

I've been unable to get online b'c of a DSL problem, and I don't know if it's permanent right now either. All to say that I am the original source of Opalka, link to Tania's site below and I don't even understand some of the comments being made about it. There was a recent thread here about it and I also linked to Google IMAGES in that thread. I've grown it many times,usually for new seed stock for my SSE listings, and it's very productive, of course being a paste variety low on seeds, for those who save seeds. Carolyn Here is a link that might be useful: Opalka