Paph IQ 6

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi Paphman910!
Great thinking! You are seeing something there that one should notice. Unfortunately, I have to say it does not have Paph wilhelminiae blood in it.

Hi Tim,
I am glad that you enjoy this riddle. This one is quite good. It is not too obvious and would require a bit of work to get to the answer! Hehhehhee!
Are you dropping hints for people? Hehehhhehee!
Cheers. Hoa.

[Jmoney]

did we confirm that it is a primary hybrid x a species yet?

and is Mount Toro definitely not a parent? because then I might guess Yellow Tiger as the primary...

and if none of that rings a bell I have to ask if platyphyllum is throwing a monkeywrench into the mix.

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi Jason,
Yes, we did confirm that it is a primary hybrid x a species in my very specific response to one of Julie's questions!

Well, Mount Toro is not a parent and Yellow Tiger is also not a parent!
Unfortunately, paph platyphyllum is also not part of the parentage for this plant.

Jason, you are doing exceptional well and I believe you have figured out the two components constituting this cross. The third component is a bit more difficult. However, keep on reading between the lines in the responses, you will see where we are heading!
At some point, I will recap this thread with more pictures and provide the rationals for the guesses. Hope you enjoy the riddle! Don't spend too much time on it, we all have work to do!
Cheers and regards. Hoa.

[Jmoney]

heh, I'm at work now and have nothing better to do between admissions than to check the box scores and look in on this riddle. I'll throw out another one and that'll be it for tonight, Sander's Pride as one parent, and I do think I see some roths in that staminode.

[bench72]

Hi Tim,
I am glad that you enjoy this riddle. This one is quite good. It is not too obvious and would require a bit of work to get to the answer! Hehhehhee!
Are you dropping hints for people? Hehehhhehee!
Cheers. Hoa.

dropping hints however long surely isn't cheating right??

[Piper]

Ouch, Tim-O!

Be careful, or you'll trip on it!

Julie

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Well, it's time to re-cap our fun little game here.

If we read the posts and between the lines, we can tell of the thoughts behind the guesses and every one has done such an amazing job to figure out this one !

The plant is indeed Paph. Lawless Sandchild. What a great name, huh? I really like the way this one sound like!
The Lawless Sandchild grex is a cross between Sander's Pride and rothchildianum. Sander's Pride is a primary hybrid between stonei and sanderianum. So it has genetic contributions from three most beautiful paph species known to us (or at least in my opinion any way), the regal beauty of the stonei - queen of the paph, the majestic power of the roth - king of the paph, and a touch of the out-worldly charm of the sanderianum.
So how well people did? Paphman910 fired the first salvo and was responsible for getting people on the right track ( ) since he was the first to recognize the unambiguous influence of the stonei (for example, the coloring and the stripes on the dorsal). Julie with her many questions gave us another important clue, it is a cross between a coryos primary hybrid and a coryos species. From my answer to Paphman910, we then knew that stonei is not one of the immediate parents. With these clues, we arrived at the parental lineage as shown by Tim. From the look of the flowers, one could also discern the strong influence of the roth genetics, especially through the look/the coloring/the posture of the petals and the dorsals. So rothchildianum is part of the genetic make-up. For blooms with such strong roth influences, roth must be one of the immediate parents. That is why we had such guesses like Lady Rothchild (Lady Isabel x roth, i.e. 3/4 roth, 1/4 stonei) (or even Lady Isabel (1/2 roth, 1/2 stonei) if we did not know of earlier hints). However, many people also recognized that the roth influence is not that strong (at most 1/2), so it would appear there is another species in the mix, and it should be part of the primary hybrid parent.
Among rather common stonei hybrids like Mount Toro (stonei x philippinense), Yellow Tiger (stonei x praestans), Stone Addict (stonei x adductum), Sander's Pride (stonei x sanderianum), one could easily eliminate the praestans and adductum through the coloring of the flowers. Now we really had only two crosses to contend with. Many good paph heads came up with Genevieve Booth (Mount Toro x roth) as their first guess, which is most excellent already. The two species, phillippinense and sanderianum are very close relatives, so similar in many ways. But the key to distinguish them is the pouch and probably the petals as well. In most if not all of Mount Toro, the pouch coloring is not as dark as this one (Julie recognizes this feature first - great job !). Once you started to veer toward sanderianum, you could also see that there is no influence of the phillippinense on the petals in this one. Since I took the picture, I also know that the petals are quite long on this one, 6 in. plus and still growing. They appears a bit short because they are pointing away from the camera perspective. One could see this effect in the difference in size of the two flowers, the lower bloom looks smaller than the one above although they are the same. That happens because the top one is closer to the camera.

So the crowned winner for this contest is ....... JULIE . She is the first to arrive at the answer. Tim is our first runner-up and he did it with the least number of guesses . And Jason is our second runner-up and he did it with great reasonings !
Personally, I think we are all winner with this one since the path to the right answer has been a collective effort . Even me, I have learned many things about these paph species through answering and analyzing the rationals that people provided me for their guesses.
I will take more pictures of this beauty (front and side views) this weekend, hopefully the petals finish their growing by then so we can all learn some more! Thanks so much everyone for taking part. Have fun!
Cheers and regards.
Hoa.

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Finally I had some time to take more pictures of the blooms. Beautiful flowers indeed and they are BIG! If you guys look at the sideview of the flowers, you could see that the petals are quite long, almost 8 inches (Unfortunately not as long as I wish for), a trait from the sanderianum, albeit inherited weakly.
At this point, it blooms on a second mature growth, the plant still has a third unbloomed mature growth and this one is still putting out vigorous leaves. I hope it will bloom again with this stronger growth with more spectacular flowers! Enjoy!
Cheers. Hoa.

[Jmoney]

excellent! looks almost like a giant Lady Isabel!

I guess the petal length is probably to be expected...I read somewhere that things like flower dimensions are usually predicted with the geometric mean and not the arithmetic mean. i.e. if you cross a stonei with 5 inch petals with a 24-inch sanderianum, the geometric mean is the square root of 5 times 24, which roughly comes out to 11 inches (as perhaps the "average" sander's pride). if you cross that to a nice roths with 6 inch petals, the geometric mean would be the square root of 66, roughly 8 inches.

everyone always wants the outliers though! (and only those that shade towards LARGE flower parts)

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi Jason!

It does look like a giant Lady Isabel, doesn't it?
Thanks for the comments! That is some great food for thought right there that you gave us. I had to think about it for a while. While I agree with your point but I should add that the geometric rule might be the norm but not absolute since we might find an exception right away (the PEOY, or maybe in this cross the petal length in progeny is more uniform than in other sanderianum crosses). The geometric rule makes sense since flower size is basically governed by the number of cell divisions possible (analogous to population growth), and as such, the geometric mean, not the arithmetic mean is the rule of the day.
Cheers. Hoa.