Identification Help

[Dorsetman]

Googled for Colmanara Masai Red and Oncostele Midnight Miracles came out.

How curious. I just tried it - googling- and it came up with a page of direct hits including a couple of references back to this site. All showing the real McCoy.......

[Azizan]

How curious. I just tried it - googling- and it came up with a page of direct hits including a couple of references back to this site. All showing the real McCoy.......

I mean I googled Colmanara Masai Red and scrolled down a little bit, I looked at Bluenanta site which wrote Colmanara Masai Red, so I went to click the link and there you go Oncostele Midnight Miracles. Some photos looked similar to this post too. The link OrchidRoots. I am puzzled now. Maybe you can cross reference to Orchidwiz.

[Dorsetman]

Oncostele is a man-made genus involving Rhyncostele and Oncidium. The Rhynco' almost universally used is one which was known, way,way back, as odontoglossum bictoniense - and Masai Red is a an enlarged, highly coloured version of that parent. The Oncidium part could be any other compatible member of the
family, but usually a complex hybrid made up of plants which once were odontoglossum a, and maybe some f them were also known as
Miltonias - some of which are not Miltonias today. Hybrid breeding of this kind is a whole can of worms. Best leave the lid on, I think !

[raybark]

I cannot speak for the registration status, but there is a cultivar of Oncostele Midnight Miracles 'Masai Red' HCC/AOS.

I'll bet this is a screw up in which someone reregistered a cross based upon its cultivar epithet.

[PaphMadMan]

"Colmanara" Masai Red was registered as an unknown cross - Colmanara was just a guess, and probably chosen more for the commercial recognition of Colmanara Wildcat and others at the time than any thought to actual parentage. That registration was withdrawn when it was determined (How? I don't know.) to be the same cross as Oncostele Midnight Miracles (Rhynchostele bictoniensis x Oncidium cariniferum). Colmanara is no longer used in current registrations. If the award for Oncostele Midnight Miracles 'Masai Red' HCC/AOS is real it may have been the same original clone known as Masai Red, or not, but it is a poor cultivar name either way, possibly deliberately chosen to cause confusion, hoping to cash in on the widespread sales under the Masai Red name and maybe even prevent others from using it.

As Geoff pointed out, it resembles a big dark form of Rhychostele bictoniensis, as do an array of similar hybrids. From this picture alone I wouldn't positively identify which one, though I have no doubt about Rhynchostele bictoniensis ancestry.

[Dorsetman]

With the UK customs, the whole idea of CITES free is a bit of a joke anyway. The last two importations I made with CITES were 1 - when my boxes were taken away for further investigation and it took a week for them to be found - and I made several journeys up and down the motorways ( at that time, 200 mile round trips), visiting the airport in vain, despite having proper CITES documentation on the outside of them, and 2 - when my importation was "passengers accompanied luggage" - two large boxes , and I had the CITES forms in my hand when I walked through the red channel . The forms ( in the UK they are perforated down both edges, folded zig-zag computer stationary, almost A3 size per page, in five copies,) made a block of paper rather heavy to carry, over one inch thick. ( our stupid regulations at that time needed one CITES application for each different orchid - so that although I ould bring in - say - 1000 plants of Vanda Dr.Anek on a single form, I needed a hundred forms to bring in one each of a hundred Vanda hybrids with different names.
There was no-one in the red channel - no customs officers ( all gone for a quiet fag maybe ? ) so I just walked on and looked for my car... and wondered if I should bother getting CITES at all, if I ever did it again.

I still haven't made up my mind.....but maybe I never will do it again anyway.

[Azizan]

With the UK customs, the whole idea of CITES free is a bit of a joke anyway. The last two importations I made with CITES were 1 - when my boxes were taken away for further investigation and it took a week for them to be found - and I made several journeys up and down the motorways ( at that time, 200 mile round trips), visiting the airport in vain, despite having proper CITES documentation on the outside of them, and 2 - when my importation was "passengers accompanied luggage" - two large boxes , and I had the CITES forms in my hand when I walked through the red channel . The forms ( in the UK they are perforated down both edges, folded zig-zag computer stationary, almost A3 size per page, in five copies,) made a block of paper rather heavy to carry, over one inch thick. ( our stupid regulations at that time needed one CITES application for each different orchid - so that although I ould bring in - say - 1000 plants of Vanda Dr.Anek on a single form, I needed a hundred forms to bring in one each of a hundred Vanda hybrids with different names.
There was no-one in the red channel - no customs officers ( all gone for a quiet fag maybe ? ) so I just walked on and looked for my car... and wondered if I should bother getting CITES at all, if I ever did it again.

I still haven't made up my mind.....but maybe I never will do it again anyway.

Few questions in my mind right now. What year did this happened? Just wondering what happened to the plants in the end for both of your importations?