# ?barbiggerum



## cnycharles (Feb 18, 2008)

hello, not sure if this is the right forum. need 'what is it' but without a picture,...
friend at a nearby orchid club showed me a picture and plant of what he bought from andy's orchids as paph barbiggerum(sp) from china. he says the flower is barbiggerum, but instead of being a tiny plant, each leaf must be 7-8" across so it is much larger. is there another species larger that looks like bargiggerum but is much larger plant, or a likely natural hybrid?
thanks


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## Rick (Feb 18, 2008)

cnycharles said:


> but instead of being a tiny plant, each leaf must be 7-8" across so it is much larger. is there another species larger that looks like bargiggerum but is much larger plant, or a likely natural hybrid?
> thanks



Each leaf is 7-8" long or the plant leaf span is 7-8" across?

A 16" LS plant would be a world record barbigerum. A 7-8"LS barbigerum is not very unusual.

Any markings on the base of the plant and undersides of the leaves?

I have purchased barbigerum from Andy's and they were normal size, so if it really is a 16" plant your friend aught to give him a call and verify the plant. I really like getting stuff from Andy, but he's not infallible, and there are occaisonally mislabels.

Also Andy generally deals in seed grown paphs, so it is very unlikely that it would be a jungle collected natural hybrid.


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## cnycharles (Feb 18, 2008)

Hello Rick, 
Each leaf is roughly 8" or so, tons of leaves I would have to say maybe near 20 or so. Leaves are pale green not very wide, I can't say for sure but there may have been some dark at the base of the plant, though I just watered my plants and was looking at my spicerianum so that might be the memory picture I have in my head. I don't remember any spotting or tesselation. My friend is going to check with Andy, I just thought I'd wing it and see what opinions anyone might have. I've seen barbiggerum album and it is much much larger than that. He didn't give a look underneath the leaves at all


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## Eric Muehlbauer (Feb 18, 2008)

Yes, there are large forms of barbigerum (about insigne sized...) and there are also related species like vejvarutianum and rhizomatosum which resemble barbigerum (only larger) so much that they are labelled as such. Check the latest Orchid Digest (or maybe the issue before latest) for a good article on the "barbigerum complex". I have one of those also....Take care, Eric


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## SlipperKing (Feb 18, 2008)

I also have one, the same size (16-18") and it's from Andy's. It looks like barbigerum but larger and the dorsal is darker colored


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## Rick (Feb 18, 2008)

Eric Muehlbauer said:


> Yes, there are large forms of barbigerum (about insigne sized...) and there are also related species like vejvarutianum and rhizomatosum which resemble barbigerum (only larger) so much that they are labelled as such. Check the latest Orchid Digest (or maybe the issue before latest) for a good article on the "barbigerum complex". I have one of those also....Take care, Eric



Do you mean Orchids (AOS) or OD? I can't find anything on paphs in the last two quarters of OD, but in the 3rd quarter there are two articles by Averyanov on the callosum complex and the villosum complex in SE asia.

I haven't really been keeping up with the new species, but I'd like to hear more about these new barbigerum.


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## Rick (Feb 18, 2008)

I did poke around on vejuarutianum and rhizosmatosum. Yes they are big with barbigerum like flowers.

They are probably European bred, but imported as barbigerum to avoid new species status.


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## SlipperKing (Feb 18, 2008)

> I haven't really been keeping up with the new species, but I'd like to hear more about these new barbigerum.


http://www.orchid.or.jp/orchid/people/tanaka/indexe.html

check out this site for new species stuff


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## paphioboy (Feb 18, 2008)

umm...exul? there are some pretty large exul...


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## Rick (Feb 19, 2008)

SlipperKing said:


> http://www.orchid.or.jp/orchid/people/tanaka/indexe.html
> 
> check out this site for new species stuff



Thanks. I've been on Tanaka's site for other stuff.

So possibly rhizomatosum is a natural hybrid of barbigerum and villosom (x areeanum), and vejuarutianum used to be considered a variety of charlesworthii 25 years ago.

If the plant in question is of Chinese origin, and has no purple spotting on the leaf undersides, then it could be a good candidate for rhizomatosum (or x areeanum). Given that Olaf Gruss has seen or described these plants, I wouldn't be surprised if they were bred in Germany.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they were really just large lowland forms of barbigerum. Kind of like the wilhelminea / glanduliferum complex.


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## Corbin (Apr 28, 2008)

I am resurrecting this thread because I just got a barbigerum from Andy and it is huge. About the only things I have bigger are my spicerianum and a couple big Phals. This thing measure 17 inches tip to tip. 

I bought it because in most literature it is described as "small" "diminutive" and "used to breed dwarf complexes" and small is what I need. 

Does anybody know where the small variety can be purchased?

I guess the other point is, that this is likely what Charles got since he also got his from Andy.


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## Rick (Apr 28, 2008)

I got my original small barbigerum from Andy's. You might check with him if he has any more of those. Paphreek may have a bunch of xtras he may part with one or two???


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## Eric Muehlbauer (Apr 28, 2008)

Andy's used to sell the traditional tiny barbigerum....and I hope they do again. The whole beauty and charm of barbigerum is in its tiny size....expanding the flower and plant just makes for a boring, "generic" paph. Nice, but not worth the space for the price.....Take care, Eric


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## paphreek (Apr 28, 2008)

Rick said:


> I got my original small barbigerum from Andy's. You might check with him if he has any more of those. Paphreek may have a bunch of xtras he may part with one or two???



Thanks for the mention, Rick. If you're interested, send me a PM, Corbin. I have several different crosses in seedling size.


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## Roth (May 4, 2008)

Corbin said:


> I am resurrecting this thread because I just got a barbigerum from Andy and it is huge. About the only things I have bigger are my spicerianum and a couple big Phals. This thing measure 17 inches tip to tip.
> 
> I bought it because in most literature it is described as "small" "diminutive" and "used to breed dwarf complexes" and small is what I need.
> 
> ...



I dunno what's that, but it is neither barbigerum nor rhizomatosum. It is borderline esquirolei, if it has a red base, it is the brown colored form of coccineum...

Barbigerum is nowadays a rare species compared to some years ago ( and very good barbigerum are very rare too), most of the time you will end up with the brown coccineum form or rhizomatosum. Coccineum is smaller than helenae by the way, the dwarf helenaes are gone in Viet Nam too, we have massive big plants that are quite unappealing appearing on the market.


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