March 2016 – Kay Klausing

Kai Klausing (and daughter)We are delighted to welcome back Dr. Kay Klausing, 1st VP of the San Diego County Orchid Society who will speak to us on orchids viruses. The title of his talk is "Orchid Viruses:  Introduction and Practical Aspects of Virus Testing". During his Masters and PhD work, Kay used a virus as a model system for replication and, as such, he has had a long interest in and fascination with viruses. Kay will give a brief introduction to orchid viruses, but will focus mainly on the practical aspects from the point of growing orchids. He will give a live demo on how to perform tests, share the test results for his collection and provide tips on how to prevent the spread of virus in a collection.

Kay was born and raised in Germany, but he did not start growing orchids until he was in college. The University of Konstanz, where he got his Master and PhD in Molecular Genetics, had a lone Dendrobium kingianum specimen covering 2 huge baskets that had developed thousands of keikis due to being kept too warm. The gardener gave him a few keikis, which got him hooked on orchids. Kay moved to the US in 1990 to do a postdoc at UCSD and gave his collection to his dad who also got “infected” with the dreaded orchid virus, much to his mom’s dismay. 

One of the first things Kay bought in the US, before even owning a car, was an orchid at an orchid show sponsored by POS. Since then, his orchid collection has swelled to about 800 plants with an emphasis on the Cattleya alliance, consisting of mostly species. Kay grows his plants in three greenhouses (cool, intermediate and warm) and one outdoor area for rupicolous Laelias.

The March plant table will be comprised of select cattleyas divisions given to POS by Fred Clarke as well as several hybrid Australian dendrobiums produced by Fred.