January 2015 – Kay Klausing

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.