NO OSGB MEETING ON 7 JULY AT NAPIER HALL

Please remember that there will be no meeting at Napier Hall on Saturday 7 July. The meeting will be held on Saturday 14 July instead, to avoid clashing with the Peterborough Interenational Orchid Show (6-8 July). The speaker on 14 July will be Michael McIllmurray talking about the OSGB trip to Ecuador.

Jerry Fischer lecture tour and pre-order information

Jerry Lee Fischer of Orchids Limited, Minnesota, USA, will be speaking to three orchid societies this autumn when he visits to UK to attend the 25th BOC Congress at Writhlington School. His visit is sponsored by the British Orchid Council and all three societies have offered to open these meetings to members of any society that is affiliated to the BOC.

His engagements are as follows:

Tuesday 23 October - Cheltenham & District Orchid Society
Lecture: The history and development of Orchids Limited, hybridising and favourite orchids

Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 October - BOC Congress
Lecture 1: An overview of phragmipediums including culture
Lecture 2: Phragmipedium kovachii, history, hypbriding and culture

Wednesday 31 October - Darlington & District Orchid Society
Lecture: The history and development of Orchids Ltd, hybridising and favourite orchids

Saturday 3 November - Orchid Society of Great Britain
Lecture: Paphiopedilum, culture and overview of species

Jerry will be bringing with him pre-orders for delivery, along with a small selection of plants for sale. Pre-ordering is available now, until 15 August, details below.

To all our UK customers, from Jerry Lee Fischer, President, Orchids Limited, USA.

Orders can be placed via our website: http://www.orchidweb.com/ Scroll down to Orchid Events and click on the October 2012, Great Britain Tour.

In the UK, DEFRA (the British permit authorities) requires import fees of £59 per genus. Because of this, I must narrow my offerings to Paphiopedilums, Phragmipediums, Cattleya, Phalaenopsis and Neofinetia. These genus fees will be covered within the handling fee. (If you are interested in any other genus, you can still be part of our group order shipping to Germany in late October. You will receive an announcement of that trip later this month.)

I will also bring a limited number of selected plants for sale at each meeting.

The deadline for placing orders is 15 August 2012. Please note: No changes can be made to orders after August 15th, as we must begin preparing the required documents. It takes several weeks to process the paperwork for an October departure.

When placing your order via our website, please select only plants from these 5 genus that are noted as ‘CITES-approved for export’. We have added many new products since our last offering. You can see these new products by going to the ‘Advanced’ search on our website and looking in ‘Added to Inventory in’ link and choosing the ‘last 6 months’ option. The items will then be listed from the oldest added to the newest. They are not listed alphabetically or by category.

Once your order has been reviewed and finalized, payment is due in full to hold your order. Payment must be made in US dollars via credit card (American Express, Visa, MasterCard or Discover) or PayPal. Wire transfer is no longer an option unless your order is over US$1,000.
There is no minimum order for pickup at the Society meetings. The minimum order for shipping within the UK is US$100, shipped to one address.

If picking up your order, an additional 20% will be added to your order to cover document processing fees (5 genus fees, CITES permits, import permit, phytosanitary certificate, baggage fees). The fee for those orders being shipped within the UK is 25%. This covers the actual ship cost. One exception will be the shipping of extra-large plants such as some cattleyas, as these may require extra baggage/shipping fees due to size and weight. These possible additional costs will be calculated once we have your final order and will be charged once the order is received.

Your order will be shipped by Royal Mail or Parcel Force within the UK. Large orders may require shipping by FedEx or another carrier and may cost more to do so.

If the plants you receive do not do well in the first 2-3 weeks, please notify us and send pictures by email, if possible. I assure you that we will replace those plants on one of our next visits.

If you have any questions, please email us at orchids@orchidweb.com

Grants for orchid conservation

The Barbara Everard Trust for Orchid Conservation (BETOC) was set up principally to conserve old hybrid orchids in cultivation, and also to have a greenhouse run by the OSGB to conserve them. We tried the latter in the past and it was not successful, and for the former we have had very few applications over the years.

Consequently we have supported greenhouse cultivation of orchid species in the UK, giving grants to National Collection holders under the Plant Heritage scheme (previously National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens) to improve their collections and for equipment for their greenhouses. We have also given grants for publications concerning growing orchids in greenhouses, and for some educational grants for projects involving cultivation and conservation in cultivation. BETOC does not give grants to conservation of wild orchids growing in their habitats.

From now onwards the BETOC grants and finances will appear in the OSGB Journal and Annual Supplement. A sticker is being printed for members to put in their greenhouses, which advises people to contact BETOC if the plants cannot be looked after any more. We can then arrange to collect the plants and place them with suitable growers, if a specialist collection, and with members, if general plants. So, if you or your relatives can no longer look after your orchids, BETOC will take them away and get them cared for.

The Trustees ask that applications for grants be sent to the BETOC Secretary, Val Micklewright, e-mail: val@micklewright.com