Very easy ti understand Ken.

Another use for old cell phones (with cameras) is to use them as security cameras in your home. An app for androids is Salient Eye and one for Apple is Manything. I am sure there are others out there also. Obviously you have to keep the phone plugged in but in addition to security, it is fun to watch your animals when you are away from home.

Changing the subject - we southerners cook out a lot and I have two friends who have had to have major surgery due to accidentally ingesting a stray bristle from a grill cleaning brush. This article is not just hype.
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com...

Alice....I show that on the news here locally about the wire grill brushes. Just to think that is what my dad always used to clean our grills with. I will be praying for your friends and hope they have a quick recovery. Have a great weekend.

Yikes, regarding those bristles!!

@ctcarol

ctcarol said:I'm just relieved that most of the growers haven't caught up with the changes. If I want to see a Laelia the west coast growers still list it under Laelia...mostly. When I was searching for Euchile citrina, I found it had been reclassified numerous times. If I had known what to look under, I could have found one easily, but bought a bare root at a show (that was probably illegally harvested), because it had the name I was looking for.

I didn't want to hijack the "Names Game thread", so here we are in our chat thread!
I would like to point out that I think it must be nowadays pretty impossible to sell illegally collected Orchids, especially at a show. There are so many rules ( see CITES) and laws in place, how anything would slip through those, I can't imagine?
Ecuagenera comes to mind as a vendor coming to shows with their Orchids bare root. Now Ecuagenera propagates and grows their orchids in HUGE nurseries and we were able to visit their nurseries at the Gualaceo location.They have large staff preparing Orchids for a show, it must be a huge job!
I could imagine that keeping them in pots might be too expensive to have them flown to Miami or other entry points.

Instead of just posting a link, here are my pictures from this visit:

Ursula said:Day 12 Ecuagenera with its ca 30 greenhouses in gorgeous surroundings! We slept at the very comfortable guesthouse and were invited to take our meals with Jose/Pepe and wife Ingrid Portilla and their family in their beautiful home.

Here is a glimpse of the well managed greenhouses, we saw just a few, to tour all would take a long time.

What a wonderful place and we will have to say good bye on day 13.

disclaimer - no, I am not paid by Ecuagenera to yodel about their nursery, it simply made a truly lasting impression!

That is quite the operation, Ursula.

And this was only a fraction, Ken!

Impressive, to say the least.

Yodel away - that was impressive indeed.

I would not have minded staying a few more days....

Looking at that huge facility and all of those orchids therein, I had a vision of some diminutive, bespectacled boffin in a lab coat making what seemed to him like a small decision to change the genus of digbyana, never comprehending the ramifications nor the look of horror on the faces of nursery workers and orchid hobbyist across the globe.

Jim

. . . exactly

I can easily see that picture.

Jim..

You hit the nail on the head, Jim! Totally!

Bare root is the only way orchids growers from other countries can land in certain places for shows and sales. California and Canada off the top of my head (which houses my brain - shrinking by the moment).

Daisy

, my gray matter started shrinking a long time ago but isn't it illegal to bring anything with soil or other growing media around the roots into the US - even if it is declared and inspected?

Yes, Alice , I believe you are right...the folks at Agriculture take their jobs VERY seriously.
When I was an air hostess and bringing bulbs back from Amsterdam, my favorite vendor at the
flower market was kind enough to educate me. All the bulbs grown for export are grown in sand and any
bulbs that can be peeled ( like a daffodil) are. He would often put the certified for export sticker on
things that might sneak by...but he drew the line at a dinner plate sized Cyclamen bulb..it had been
grown in Turkey and was covered in dirt. Looking at the Asian orchid vendors at the last show in Redland
at least 3 of them were still waiting for their plants to clear Customs at noon on the first day of the show.. and
I was stunned to see Agriculture agents in uniform at the show.

Yes, soil is definitely not allowed to be brought in. Years ago I was visiting Kakteen Haage in Germany, Haage was one of the old Epiphyllum hybridizers and there is also a cactus named after him. There were several greenhouses with Epis alone. To bring some into the USA would have been possible, bare root, treated with all sorts of stuff and then certified. For a special fee which just made you give up right then and there.
I am not sure if bark falls into the same category, it probably does too, but Sphagnum does not. Ecuagenera wraps many of their plants with that and then wraps them tightly with paper.

I'm always surprised that Tropiflora imports their cork bark from Portugal, in pallet sized bales! One piece I bought had a good size spider c/w web in one of the holes so it's not all that well cleaned either. I'll have to ask them about it. Going for a little shop there this Friday