Quote Originally Posted by Katherine View Post
Several days since the post and it has yet to ' flatten out".
Thank you for your information, orchids are a complicated subject!
Katherine - paphs are notorious for being reluctant openers, although, once open, they make up for all that waiting by lasting up to 10 weeks. If it hasn't flattened a bit more in another week, you can pretty safely assume that the shape is genetic - flat dorsals aren't really useful to Paphs in the wild, since the dorsal keeps rain and other stuff from going down into the pouch (very crude explanation - Amey would be much better at this), so the dorsal actually serves as an umbrella of sorts - but that doesn't stop breeders from trying to hybridize "out" the tendency to curve inward. On the other hand, I'm just thinking, there are plenty of species paphs with dorsals that reflex (curve) back - look at P. spicerianum, for instance. The flatness thing is one of those things that judges seem to come up with as the ideal from time to time. The same rules pretty much go for Phals and Catts, among other orchids.