I like it!
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Or I'm going to call it "what the hell is that" or "oh hell no." This came to me from the garbage bin when my mother was a florist.I repotted it immediately and made it angry. Took years to flower. I peed myself when I first saw it. Usually when something spidery with yellow and brownish spots gets into the house I promptly stomp it to death. It's slowly growing on me but could someone help with an ID I'm thinking mostly Brassia
I like it!
Of course it would help to see the actual plant, and especially the size of the flowers. It could be Odontoglossum blandum, one of the cirrhosum group . The botanical info about this ( you will need to put on a serious thinking cap and get out a good botanical glossary or maybe something like The Oxford Dictionary of Plant Science” ) is as follows...
“The lip of the cirrhosum group is always rigidly attached to the column “ although this is true of most Oncidium species , “ and has a basically two-part callus, which in some cases is significantly elaborated”. And here is the really distinctive bit “ the anther cap is duck-bill shaped”. That’s the bit to look for, surely !
But of course it may well be a hybrid. An O.blandum flower is I illustrated by Harry Zelenko * and is no more than about 2 inches across.
Comes from Ecuador, this one. I’ll look out for it when I go( joke) although I am going in May for a tour with you-know who ( if you look out for the Ecuadorean dealer when you next go to a major orchid show ), 4,500 orchid species there - I wonder how many I will get to see in flower ? This is a replacement for the trip I was due to take last October which I had to cancel, as it was early in my dear late wife’s last illness. She told me several times during that, “don’t grieve , have a life, be happy - that’s what I want”. And I am trying....
( I thought others might be interested , so am replying to your pm this way, OK , Charity ? )
The asterisk is to mention the great Encyclopaedia of Oncidium species, where Harry Z and two others show life - size illustrations of 800 of the Oncidiniae, but point out that there are several hundred more which they had not been able to find as subjects for the paintings ; they largely used pickled specimens at Kew for their work. Now, bring the plant along or a flower , and I’ll take you to Kew and we’ll compare it with the specimen... ( another poor joke).. still, it would be nice !
So in other words , it's name is "oh god no." lol .I will try to do research
I do d a bit more myself - thought it might be a blandum hybrid, but no chance, there.
If I get any more ideasI will post.
So pseudobulbs are very elongated and flat, so don't think there is odontoglossum in there. Duck bill shaped you say? It's in a spot that difficult to get it out and examine it closely but it seems to be flat and upturned at the edges.rather than the helmet shape I'm used to.It's a bit larger than 2 inches more like 4.
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I still suspect a lot of brassia in this one. Resembles arthurara sea snake in all but the lip.
---------- Post Merged at 07:52 PM ----------
Also a bit of a pain in the butt. Took me years to get it to bloom but it is covered with them now.
New development. It has developed fragrance rather late. Had none at first. It's most prevalent at mid-day and to me smells like cinnamon/vanilla/mint toothpaste. . Odd!!!!
Fragrance is developed only when the required pollinator is likely to be about. If it’s a night flying moth that does the job, then no fragrance by day. In fact Darwin’s orchid - an Angraecum, pollinated by one specific moth, is only fragrant on: moonlit nights when those moths can see it as well as smell it. An orchid pollinated by certain bees is only fragrant in sunlight when those bees fly ( they need to rest in the sun, periodically, to convert some of the nectar into energy in order to complete their flight....and so on.
Fr@grance is actually a continuous release of certain complex molecules, like a drip feed, and is very”expensive” in terms of energy and resources, and the orchid does not”want to” waste them.
Ain’t nature wonderful !
So we can assume this one is probably pollinated by some species of bee or some other diurnal flying insect. We can also assume it is not present when the orchid first starts to bloom due to hibernation, but is present later as the blooms mature?
When the flower opens, it is not ready for pollination. Opening is merely the next stage in development of the flower bud. Generally speaking, among the orchids, the pollinia are only free to be released, and only sticky so as to attach to the visiting pollinator at one point, and the stigma is onlystickytoaffix the pollinia at another point in the cycle. This is to minimise the chance of self- pollination. It can’t be eliminated entirely because usually a visitor collecting pollen is the same vector as the one pollinating with previously collected pollen.
The whole process is far more complex than meets the eye : someone once made a study of the pollination cycle in Cymbidiums, and found that the pollen tubes only grow down into the seed capsule some weeks or even months after the pollen is deposited, and the actual fertilising gamete ( hope I’m using the right words, I am a bit rusty on all this ) only travels down the tube weeks after that. All this time is needed for a sequence of proteins to be triggered into action to prepare the capsule. Analogies with human fertilisation will come to mind...... the flower flushing pink very soon after the pollinia are removed is merely the first stage, and is perhaps just to say to the bee ( or whatever) “buzz off, mate, you are wasting your time here” and so reduce the possibility of the pollen being displaced in an in-needed visit.
---------- Post Merged at 10:06 PM ----------
The most amazing thing to my mind is that before there were flowers ( tree ferns and stuff like that don’t have flowering structures, even though they have two sexes which need to get together on Saturday nights !) there were no insects. Before there were insects, there were no flowers. They evolved together...
Now if you can set your time machine to go back approx. 165 million years, and have patience to sit it out and watch, you will see it all happening- and do come back and tell us - we would all love to know how this paradox was resolved.