Bournemouth Show – slipper orchids

**Dorsetman** · March 2nd, 2011, 03:19 AM

Paph wardianum got the cup for the best slipper in the show. memory is a fickle thing - should this be wardii ? If so, why ? The latin names usually have the same terminations, and its not Paphiopedalii ? Back to school for me, maybe ?

La Foret, nice “white” complex – for non paphanatics, whites are “never” pure white, since the only species which comes close is P.niveum, and that usually has some pepper dots somewhere, and to make a hybrid improving on the (quite tiny) niveum parent you have to cross it with something bigger, which is always coloured ; QED as the ancient Greeks used to say, or so they told me at school all those years ago.

Paph Nitens – an old hybrid, beautifully grown, might have done better if it had been better preented – but the spikes not tied up, some of them sprawling down, all facing in different directions ! If you are going to show at all, you have to do the job properly and clean up and tie up etc etc ; I wish I always followed my own advice.
If you haven’t see the Paph Harold Koopowitz which I showed on the first Bournemouth show posting – in the Shows section – do go and visit. It was way and above the best slipper in the show, but as a non-competitive plant did not count for best slipper. Crazy, but I didn’t make the rules.

BTW, none of these plants are mine. My own entry included Paph niveum , but it only had one flower out and three buds – and you don’t win Shows on what the plant might be like I a month’s time ; it’#s what is there when the judges go round which counts.

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