Best way to identify unknown orchid - besides asking

[notsogreenthumb]

What methods (besides years of experience) and asking on the board do you use to try to identify an unknown orchid?

So far, my attempt has been 1 figure out what major family - not too hard for many/most common stuff and then 2 google image search for that family and maybe add color, characteristics, etc...

When comparing to photos, I look at color and shape of the sepals, petals and lip.

The problem is that some of these ladies look like close sisters.

I just recently got a Phal and the guy that sold it didn't know what it was and it didn't come with a tag.

To me, it looks like a "Doritaenopsis I-Hsin Sesame" based on the third photo down in this thread, but then I've also run across some pictures identified as "Golden Prince" and "Leopard Prince" that look very close. And then sometimes I find photos of any of the three names that vary pretty wildly.

This is mine.


In this particular case, I've thought that a "Leopard Prince" might have larger more irregularly shaped spots (like a leopard) and a "sesame" might have smaller more uniform spots like sesame seeds on a hamburger bun. But then the lip seems most like what I'm seeing on the sesame. The combination of small spots and more similar lip is what lead me to the conclusion that it's a sesame.

[ksriramkumar]

In my opinion, trying to ID a hybrid based on colors cannot be 100% unless you really know the origin of the hybrid. There are similar looking hybrids being produced almost by every nursery in Taiwan/Thailand etc and they all look kinda similar to human eye but could be very different.

[raybark]

Adding to Sriram's comment, there's also the confusion brought by the fact that the same plant, when grown under different cultural conditions, can look different.

Between that, variation within a hybrid, and similarity of hybrids (Ax[BxC] is not the same as [AxB]xC), I consider "cannot be 100%" to actually be closer to a 0% chance of being correct.

[notsogreenthumb]

OK, thank you. That makes sense and explains why some pictures identified as the same hybrid can look VERY different. No worries, I'm not that worried about the ident as long as I like what, I've got!