Viruses and orchid collections

[james mickelso]

After growing orchids for quite a few years now, all of a sudden I am hearing about viruses. Few of my plants came direct from growers, for most of them came from garage sales, dumpsters, friends throwaways, HD, TJ's, and lots of different club auctions and donation tables. Few ever had color break or mal-formed leaves. Most grew great, flowering every year on schedule with very nice fully formed flowers and pushed new buds every growing season. I have had less than, and more than 100's of orchids. I recently sold over 400 orchids because I was planning to move. I have had bacterial infections, fungal infections, and bugs in my collections and I am positive most were virused. But few showed any problems and except for a handful most never showed any defineable ill-effects. And I had lots of them for a long time. So I wonder, from my experience, what is the problem with virused plants to most of us who grow orchids as purely a hobby? Yes if I was selling them on the market, or had very rare or hard to find orchids, or were propagating them for seed or crosses, I would definately want to make absolutely sure none were virused. But...an orchid costs about $25 or more and that to me is a lot of money just to throw away because a test strip said it was virused. I'd like to know how many on this board are really concerned if their collection has virused plants? Before the advent of test strips which are not fool proof and show quite an error factor anyway, orchids grew in many collections and no one seemed to report any problems. If there are seemingly so many virused plants now showing up in collections all over the place, would it not be correct in assuming that virused plants have been around in most collections for a long long time? Or have we an orchid viral pandemic on our hands? Just wanting to know how many are really concerned with whether their collection is virused and how many have unexplained problems with the plants in their collectiions that may be linked to viral infections? I have recently read a great deal on plant viruses and especially viruses that affect orchids. So I don't need to have them explained to me. Just your opinions on the threat of having a virus invading your collection.