Tonight's meeting was cancelled due to Hurricane Wilma

Bert has been a South Florida resident since 1969. In 1998 he retired after a career in academia. He confesses that he was a student in a class taught by Ruben Sauleda in 1974 and he's been addicted to orchids ever since! Currently, Bert devotes his time to raising orchids; his preference being the less common, warm growing species, especially Catasetinae. Bert currently grows about 2000 plants outdoors on shaded tables. He is active in most orchid clubs in South Miami Dade County; and in the last few years Bert organized the Educational Program at the Miami International Orchid Show.

Tonight Bert is going to speak on the interrelationships among orchids. The orchid family may be subdivided into distinct groups and genera that are more or less closely related, and which predict those species that may be hybridized. These groupings also serve as points of reference for remembering the rarer species of well recognized breeding groups, for example, Tetramicra as a cousin of the Cattleyas. Historically, orchid species were organized by classical Taxonomists on the basis of visual characteristics, but Molecular Biology now provides a more precise technique for determining the degree of interrelationships of orchids.

The device for depicting these relationships, Cladograms, and how these have been derived from DNA sequencing data, will be outlined, and examples of the rarer, more primitive orchid species, will be illustrated.

It will definitely be an interesting talk. Don't miss it!