OIP ( used to be a Burrageara) Nellie Isler "Apricot Sport"
The usual Nellie Isler is a glorious red. This is a sport or mutation - which occurs occasionally when a plant is meristemmed a lot - for example the well known V.Cambria 'Plush' was at one time being mass produced to the tune of 1 million plants a year - and of course that meant that proto-corms which were grown on could have been through the cell multiplication and then carve up stage thousands of times - even hundreds of thousands of times. Eventually they stopped doing it, as the flowers got progressively smaller, even though, in theory, each plant was identical to the next. When that plant got its FCC/RHS it had 5 1/2 inch flowers. The last meristems I saw were down to 3 inch... but along the way two different colour forms cropped up.
Evidently the same thing has happened here.
I bought this plant at our (UK) biggest show, at the week-end. Only one dealer had this, although in general 3/4 of the dealers had some of the mass produced Dutch plants, usually all the same stuff on different traders stands. Fortunately there was a lot of other stuff to interest me.
BTW ( boast, boast) my Dendrobium amethystoglossum got best Dendrobium in the show... ( or possibly best species - I have had two different reports ) -
one in the eye for the judges in my own Society who did not rate it. When I collect the medal or cup or whatever ( from my own Society President ) at the next meeting, I shall be unable to resist getting a dig in...
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