Dendrobium bronckartii
At very long last I see flowers on this species. I guess I have been growing it as a flowering size plant for at least 4 years , and this is the first flowering. This section of dendrobes has hard bulbs (canes) and leathery fo;liage. They do nothing for month after month ; one wonders whether to water or not ( don't ! ) Eventually they do produce a new growqth which quickly makes a cane, and then they go back to sleep again. Flowering has eventually been induced by giving it 7 months without water. The canes have not shrivelled at all !
I could easily have missed it . The spike only emerged from a tight bud a couple of weeks ago , and now it's open ; maybe it has flowered before, whilst I have been away from home for a few week ! But I doubt it, I would have seen the remains. I suspect that the flower life will only be a week or so - in which case it is for the chop- the space would be better filled by something else. But we'll see.
IOSPEand others ( e.g.Baker) lump it with D/amabile , D.furcatum and other species , and if you are lucky enough with your searching, you find that the plants with the various names come from widely spaced locations. Maybe a case of parallel evolution ? otherwise one has to imagine that once the single species stretched over a very wide area, and has since died out in all the intervening places.
But as my great-grandson has now learnt to say as his favourite word - "whatever"....
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