Minutes of the March 8, 2010, Meeting
April 11, 2010
President Bob Cleveland called the meeting to order and welcomed members and guests. He also welcomed two new members who joined after the Skillin’s lecture in Brunswick. Both new members live in Harpswell. Tonight’s scheduled program is the long awaited slide show of Steve Perkins’ trip to Borneo.
Treasurer’s Report Carl Burnham reported that we have a balance of $2,429.37 in our account. Membership dues are payable from September through June of each year. If you have questions about your dues, please contact Carl. Dues are still $15.00 for an individual member and $25.00 for a household membership.
Old Business:
New Hampshire Orchid Society Show (February 12, 13, and14, 2010) at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua, NH. Bob Cleveland thanked everyone who helped with the show this year.
Skillin’s Open House Set for last weekend of the month (March 27th and 28th, 2010) at Skillin’s Greenhouses in Falmouth. Contact Bob to sign up for selling divisions of plants. 10% is to go to the Society. (Secretary’s note: Unfortunately, this show was not held, having been canceled a couple of days prior to the open house, which was actually the weekend of the 20-21st.)
Next Month’s Program Chuck from Oak Hill Gardens in Dundee, Illinois, will cover the topic, “Orchids From A to Z.” Please do not bring any plants to sell at the meeting next month as a courtesy to Chuck. He will be selling plants from his greenhouses. You can also pre-order plants from him from his website. There will be a discount and he will bring them with him to the meeting. www.oakhillgardens.com (847) 428-8500.
Wiscassett Garden Club Mike Kaplan reported that he had a call from the Wiscassett Garden Club. They would like one of us to talk to their group about growing orchids inside your house. Please let Mike know if you are interested in speaking to this group.
Annual Elections Elections are coming up and it is quite possible that you will be contacted by the Nominating Committee. They will be calling several members and will inquire into their willingness to serve with our slate of officers for next year. Please give this some serious consideration if you receive such a call.
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Program Long-time member, Steve Perkins presented a lovely and informative slide show regarding his September, 2009, trip to Borneo in search of all things orchid. Steve noted that September is actually not the optimal blooming season in Borneo for orchids, however he did manage to see quite a few which were in flower. Borneo is in Tropical Malaysia and abuts Indonesia, so it is half Malaysian and half Indonesian. The climate is tropical and equatorial. Steve and his wife went to Sabah, which has extremely high humidity. The trip there took them twenty-four hours from Maine by airplane. They traveled from Portland, Maine, to Seoul, Korea, and then on to Kota Kinabalu, where they stayed. Steve noted that the cost of the trip was almost entirely the plane fare because, once you get there, everything is very inexpensive. The plane fare was not inexpensive, but the food and housing cost him almost nothing. The language spoken there is primarily Malay, but tribal languages and Chinese are also spoken. Curiously, they did not meet any other Americans the whole time they were there.
The entire village where they stayed was Muslim. There was no running water. There were strangler figs everywhere. They dined on the area’s excellent fruit, which was amazing and very delicious, although some varieties were a bit strange. Steve noted that these were the happiest people he had ever met. Steve observed that people of all economic strata in Borneo had flowers growing in their yards.
Steve reported that the trip was actually an eco-tour, in which they helped to plant (reforest) trees. The main source of revenue in Borneo is palm oil. Unfortunately, these palm oil plantations are deforesting Borneo.
Steve then described for the group all of the interesting things he and his wife saw, learned about, and did while in Borneo. Some of them are…..
They visited an orangatan preserve, saw the massive ironwood trees, hand-sized spiders, pit vipers, arboreal snakes, orchids which were actually growing on top of an outhouse, crabs which live in the rain forest, large and slow flying Tree Nymph Butterflies, the very colorful Stork Billed Kingfisher (a bird), and cobras which were brought in to the palm oil plantations to keep the rodent population down.
They also climbed Kinabalu, which is 13,435 feet high. It took them two days to get to the top, where the temperature was only 32 degrees. It was a challenging climb, but well worth it.
There are 800 plus species of orchids which grow around the mountain. Begonias and impatiens were everywhere too. Some of the orchids were lowland species, which like hot and humid conditions, and others were highland species, which prefer humidity and temperatures which cool down to thirty degrees at night.