eBay's marblekg (Gary Beinemann) - Orchid Virus Superspreader

[BrassavolaStars]

Originally Posted by BrassavolaStars

This disturbs me. I believe I have two plants from this seller. I hope they haven’t been spreading disease to others in my collection. There are both Cattleyas and the first one bloomed many times and seems to be okay (no color break or anything like that). The second one I bought a few months ago and seems a bit sickly. I guess I should test them both. Probably wouldn’t buy again though from this info. Maybe I got lucky and didn’t get a virused set (fingers crossed)

---------- Post added at 04:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:29 PM ----------

I admittedly have a bad habit of buying on eBay. I try to stick to reputable vendors like the ones mentioned earlier on the thread but sometimes a seller has something really rare that I’ve been looking for that I wasn’t able to find elsewhere. Usually a Cattleya division or hybrid that isn’t common.

Update: The first Cattleya is clean (me in my clumsiness knocked it into the sink where I was bleaching and flaming my tools though right on the open cut so I amputated an inch further and will spray with physan. Hopefully I didn’t just infect it that way but I’m pretty sure the bleach in the sink would have killed anything.

The second Cattleya has ORSV .

Now I will probably spend the whole night worrying about infecting the first one. I’ve only had the second one maybe a month and it spent little time in my greenhouse so hopefully it didn’t spread anything. That said, it did have sap on the surface since it is growing a new lead. Not to mention, I have a lot of splashing water in my GH…

[K-Sci]

Originally Posted by BrassavolaStars

Update: The first Cattleya is clean (me in my clumsiness knocked it into the sink where I was bleaching and flaming my tools though right on the open cut so I amputated an inch further and will spray with physan. Hopefully I didn’t just infect it that way but I’m pretty sure the bleach in the sink would have killed anything.

The second Cattleya has ORSV .

Now I will probably spend the whole night worrying about infecting the first one. I’ve only had the second one maybe a month and it spent little time in my greenhouse so hopefully it didn’t spread anything. That said, it did have sap on the surface since it is growing a new lead. Not to mention, I have a lot of splashing water in my GH…

I have plants in my collection for years with ORV and others with cymMV. I used to water all my orchids by submerging plants in a sink full of water, and it didn't seem to spread it. In fact, the number of infected plants in my collection was much lower than the number of infected plants recently arriving from sellers (both on and off eBay).

I think you can be certain that the virus doesn't travel through a plant fast enough that removing an inch wouldn't be far more than was necessary.

Rather than flaming, which I've also used successfully, I suggest buying single edged razor blades. You can find them on Amazon for as little as a nickle each.

-Keith