# Paph micranthum from Kwong See



## Leo Schordje (Apr 7, 2008)

This is a Paph micranthum, a plant I bought from Ray Rands some 15 or so years ago. It allegedly came from KwangSee (Cantonese to english) the province is also known as Guang Xi in pinying. It took many years to get the plant established, this is only the 3rd time it has bloomed since I got it. The natural spread is 7.5 cm horizontal and 10.0 cm vertical. The frosted look toward the petal edges is a nice shading to white. Very lovely in person. 







Except for the asymetrical color pattern in the dorsal I would say this is just about award quality. Unfortunately I was feeling under the weather and did not get it to AOS judging Saturday. Oh well, when it blooms again, in about 5 years I can try to show it then.


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## Candace (Apr 7, 2008)

I'm so jealous! I have trouble growing this one. I have much better luck with its hybrids. I like the color in the dorsal, I think it's cool.


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## rdlsreno (Apr 7, 2008)

Very nice eburneum variety!!


Ramon


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## Roth (Apr 7, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> This is a Paph micranthum, a plant I bought from Ray Rands some 15 or so years ago. It allegedly came from Kwong See (Cantonese to english) or Guang Xi in pinying. It took many years to get the plant established, this is only the 3rd time it has bloomed since I got it. The natural spread is 7.5 cm horizontal and 10.0 cm vertical. The frosted look toward the petal edges is a nice shading to white. Very lovely in person.
> 
> Except for the asymetrical color pattern in the dorsal I would say this is just about award quality. Unfortunately I was feeling under the weather and did not get it to AOS judging Saturday. Oh well, when it blooms again, in about 5 years I can try to show it then.



Very nice one... Micranthum Kwangsee/Kwong See is my favorite form of micranthum. That's funny that yours flowers now, because mine are blooming now as well.

I have many plants of micranthum kwangsee that I selected over the years. (first picture is one selected one, second is another one that is promising, but got a mice problem, plus the bloom is fading, hence the dorsal...), and I wanted to stat a thread about that variety. It is not frequently what is sold as eburneum, the micranthum eburneum sold at present time for most of them are the pale to white-pouched micranthum from North Viet Nam, and the shape can be horrible. The flower size is smaller too.

I have yet to see a really bad micranthum Kwong See ( or kwangsee, as the original exporter wrote long time ago). They come 70km south of Nanning, GuangXi province, and, no matter the plant size and shape, the flower quality is always in the medium-high to very high quality. 1 man has the complete monopoly since it has been discovered, and is the only one able to get plants of this type. He hide most of his stock, and apparently he collected a lot of plants, and divide them over the years. ( the micranthum kwangsee from the Taiwan show comes from him as well...).

They do not grow like the normal micranthum. From what I have found:

- the roots of the wild plants are always completely covered with a red sticky clay, no roots or leafmould or whatever. Normal micranthum usually have a more organic fibrous soil on and around the roots. The root system of those plants remind me of collected paph concolor

- when imported recently they are prone to leaf dieback vey easily, and to a dry yellow-brown rot.

- They grow very fast for me with warm summer temperatures and a mix that is kept drier. The leaves are skinnier than a normal micranthum as well. However, when they grow well, the normal micranthum do not grow that much and that well. The growth is periodic. They have right now a massive spurt of growth, after a very cold winter.

Do you have a picture of the leaves of yours by the way ?


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## Roth (Apr 7, 2008)

Another beautiful micranthum kwangsee, belonging to Lilo/Malipoense





I was the previous owner, and she got a wonderful bloom 

That plant leafspan if I remember correctly was 8 cm total..


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## jblanford (Apr 7, 2008)

Very nice Leo.. That looks great. Jim.


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## SlipperFan (Apr 7, 2008)

Beautiful blooms.


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## WolfDog1 (C. Williams) (Apr 7, 2008)

WOW!

Craig


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## Roth (Apr 7, 2008)

One more thing for this variety, they like to be kept quite dry and cold when the spathe forms in winter time until they bloom, that's the way to have much "rounder" flowers as well.. Keeping them on the dry side ( like for normal micranthum) prevents bud blast.


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## Hien (Apr 7, 2008)

Sanderianum said:


> Another beautiful micranthum kwangsee, belonging to Lilo/Malipoense
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Stunning.
Same can be said about the other 2 flowers.


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## SlipperKing (Apr 8, 2008)

Great flowers guys! Thanks for the valuable info Sandie too!

Rick H


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## goldenrose (Apr 8, 2008)

:drool::drool:Gorgeous! 
Another one not for me!


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## Corbin (Apr 8, 2008)

Beautiful. I am not a real fan of these but that is nice.


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## NYEric (Apr 8, 2008)

These are so beautiful as to make me weep. :sob: I wish I was better w/ paph culture so I could invest in more of these.


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## Leo Schordje (Apr 8, 2008)

*Paph micranthum from KwangSee*

Hi Sanderianum - thank you for the info and beautiful pictures. 
1.) First My initial post I mispelled the Wade-Giles version of the name of the province that in pinying is called GuangXI, the plant tags do say KwangSee. I tend to post from work, rather than from home where it is easy to check. 
2.) Your observation are wonderful and do match the way my plants grow. 
They were VERY slow to establish, and I did encounter that dry yellow-brown leaf die back. It took a couple years to get rid of that. Have not seen it in quite a while now. The roots were clean when Ray Rands sent them, so I did not see the red clay. The KwangSee do seem to grow in spurts, often when the other more common varieties are resting. I don't dry mine in winter, and I had the flower bud blast on the better one of my KwangSee's, so I will try drying them out more next winter. 
3.) The leaves are dark compared to the vietnamense version. The tesselations are small silver dots, rather than the more common larger checked pattern. The background color of the leaf is very dark green, the look can appear almost black under low light. My flash made the leaf look greener than it does in life. 





4.) I also have seen what I suspect are the Vietnamense race with white pouches, and they are definitely a different race of micranthum. The pouches tend to 'hang' very low, and they are a smaller flower. The leaves are bright green with heavy silver tesselation, giving a very bright effect, nothing like the dark almost black green of the true KwangSee race of micranthum. 
This is a picture of one,





5.) A final question; What do you know wbout the race of micranthum called Kwei Chow? or is it Kwie Chow? I suspect it is a province name in the Wade-Giles transliteration system, but what is unique about micranthum from Kwei Chow?

Thanks in advance
Leo


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## @[email protected] (Apr 8, 2008)

micranthum is not my favorite species but those on this topic (Leo Schordje and sanderianum) are beautiful!


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## Jorch (Apr 8, 2008)

Not sure if it helps or has any relevance to your question, Leo, but Guangxi province (or region) is also called "Gui". so "Gui Zhou" (or Kwai Chou, in your message) means province of Gui, which is Guangxi.


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## Leo Schordje (Apr 8, 2008)

Jorch said:


> Not sure if it helps or has any relevance to your question, Leo, but Guangxi province (or region) is also called "Gui". so "Gui Zhou" (or Kwai Chou, in your message) means province of Gui, which is Guangxi.



Thank you, that makes some sense. So KwaiChou or Gui Zhou would be a region in GuangXi? Or is it a neighboring province of similar size as GuangXi?

The reason I asked is my micranthum from Ray Rands that was listed as from Kwai Chou (Gui Zhou) has the largest flowers of any of my micranthums, good deep color and typical medium colored foliage. Ray Rand's ad said it was one of the few that were found occasionally growing epiphytically. - I think this might be apocryphal at best. At any rate, it is different than the 'run of the mill' Paph micranthums that I have.

Ah, those were the good old days, when every month Rands would have a new ad from new stuff from all over the world, long long time ago.


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## Jorch (Apr 8, 2008)

Kwai, or Gui, is the "abbreviation" for Guangxi province. So both Kwai Chou and Guong Xi both refer to the same province.


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## Leo Schordje (Apr 8, 2008)

Like the refrigerator, you open the door, and the light goes on. 

So both types are from GuangXi, one is a unique white pouch plant, and from a different part of the same province comes a really nice deep pink pouched plant. One of these days I'll post a picture of the micranthum I have that is alleged to come from Yunan. All are subtle variations on a lovely theme.


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## NYEric (Apr 8, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> Like the refrigerator, you open the door, and the light goes on.



:rollhappy: LOL!


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## Hien (Apr 8, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> Like the refrigerator, you open the door, and the light goes on.
> 
> So both types are from GuangXi, one is a unique white pouch plant, and from a different part of the same province comes a really nice deep pink pouched plant. One of these days I'll post a picture of the micranthum I have that is alleged to come from Yunan. All are subtle variations on a lovely theme.



I think there is a different in geography.
Guizhou borders Sichuan (north), Yunnan (west), Guangxi (south)

In vietnamese language they are Quy Chau (maybe Que Chau), Tu xuyen, Van Nam, Quang Tay (I think the meaning are either Precious Land or cinnamon, Four Rivers, Southern cloud, & Western Province respectively, they are four different provinces)
So micranthums from Guizhou will be different from the ones from Guangxi


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## mccallen (Apr 8, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> Ah, those were the good old days, when every month Rands would have a new ad from new stuff from all over the world, long long time ago.



What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.


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## Jorch (Apr 8, 2008)

Hien said:


> I think there is a different in geography.
> Guizhou borders Sichuan (north), Yunnan (west), Guangxi (south)



Yes, you are right Hien. There is a "Gui Zhou" Province north of Guangxi (which I totally forgot about, my bad) so the micranthum that Leo was talking about could very well come from this province. 

If we can find out which "Gui" (in chinese character) was used in reference to that nice micranthum with deep color..


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## Hien (Apr 8, 2008)

mccallen said:


> What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.



I used to see those ads from R J. Rand on AOS magazins too.
And they are the cheapest prices you can ever find anywhere.
a few bucks for a plants. They are hard to find plants too. One time , I even saw cyp tibeticum.
Another time, besseae from Colombia (not Ecuador or Peru)


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## Roth (Apr 8, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> Hi Sanderianum - thank you for the info and beautiful pictures.
> 2.) Your observation are wonderful and do match the way my plants grow.
> They were VERY slow to establish, and I did encounter that dry yellow-brown leaf die back. It took a couple years to get rid of that. Have not seen it in quite a while now. The roots were clean when Ray Rands sent them, so I did not see the red clay. The KwangSee do seem to grow in spurts, often when the other more common varieties are resting. I don't dry mine in winter, and I had the flower bud blast on the better one of my KwangSee's, so I will try drying them out more next winter.



That's a mystery, I got some of my plants from Maisie in California many years ago, they had this dry brown rot, and since that, all the kwangsee I got always started to have that... 

The real fact is that no one has seen them in the wild 'yet'. There is a picture in Phillip Cribb Book of that variety in the wild, but some people told me some stories about that pic... I have seen personnally people planting some plants for the 'scientists' in Tam Dao, to take pictures. The scientists did not know they were fake natural conditions, but those people ( always collectors, they need only money !!!) would not bother to bring people to the real place. That pic does not match as well the clay on the roots...

As for the collector of KwangSee, that's his relatives who collect the plants, so it is "inside the family". No one knows the place exactly, except that it is 70km south of Nanning, more or less.



> 4.) I also have seen what I suspect are the Vietnamense race with white pouches, and they are definitely a different race of micranthum. The pouches tend to 'hang' very low, and they are a smaller flower. The leaves are bright green with heavy silver tesselation, giving a very bright effect, nothing like the dark almost black green of the true KwangSee race of micranthum.
> This is a picture of one,



It is definitely the white pouched micranthum from Viet Nam. You have been lucky, many are much uglier than the one on the picture ! The flowers usually are in the 5cm+/-1 cm, I have seen some 3cm ones once too, a complete batch at a collector's place. Sometimes they have some plants that looks like KwangSee micranthum as well, vey dark leaves, but the pattern is a little bit different ( hard to tell apart without experience...). 



> 5.) A final question; What do you know wbout the race of micranthum called Kwei Chow? or is it Kwie Chow? I suspect it is a province name in the Wade-Giles transliteration system, but what is unique about micranthum from Kwei Chow?



That's Guizhou. Supposedly there are red types of micranthum over there, and the huge flowered paler type. But from my experience, it is a little bit more difficult than that...

For the micranthum KwangSee as an example, 1 man knows the place. There are many colonies of micranthum in GuangXi province, but only 1 or one group has the KwangSee type. In North Viet Nam, Ha Giang, there are many micranthums, and many collectors. But only one is able to get the huge flowered micranthum with pink pouch in that area. Same for the armeniacum album, only 1 collector knows where one colony is. Guizhou, I have seen some ugly micranthum from that province, and some very beautiful ones. In Nanning, some traders have locally collected micranthum with 10+ cm flowers and massive plants ( same for some armeniacum populations, 20cm x 3 cm leaves, they looks like hybrids or armeniacum on steroids). So it is possible to say that one type comes from one area, but not that one area has only that type...

Epiphytic micranthum is not quite a legend, I have seen once in Yunnan a nice clump of micranthum on a sewed off branch. The branch was heavily decayed, and the tree was obviously dying. I think that it is a big problem too with all orchid species, there are populations that are used to get some specific nutrition or growing conditions, and it is difficult to say that there are a single group of optimal conditions to grow a species. Think about humans, you feed an African with a lot of food in Africa, he will stays tall and with muscles. Do the same with an European, and you end up with Dodo-200kg... Or alcohol, the people in Papua New Guinea and the native Aborigens from Australia can become completely mad after one glass. The Swedish can drink some liters without any problems. They are all humans, but with local specificities. Same stands true for all plant species to my mind, most will need similar conditions and perform OK, but some will have very specific requirements...














Thanks in advance
Leo[/QUOTE]


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## Park Bear (Apr 9, 2008)

great thread...thanks for all the info


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## Leo Schordje (Apr 11, 2008)

Thank you one and all for all the information. Sanderianum, your insights are so very valuable. Thank you


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## streetmorrisart (Apr 11, 2008)

So very beautiful. I traded for mine with apprehension because I didn't want to mistreat such a plant, but it's doing fine--I'll be happy if it's half as nice as any here. Thanks...


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## Leo Schordje (Apr 11, 2008)

mccallen said:


> What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.


Strap in - its a long historical and folk-lorical tale. 
Well, depending on your political bend (tragety or victory) there are a couple ways to look at what happened. For me around 1980 or so I really got into Paphs. At that time the only import papers really needed were a Phytosanitary for Dept of Ag showing the plants were disease free. None of this CITES stuff, at that time CITES only pertained to Whales, Elephants and Tigers. THe plant references were still under negociation. Then in 1988 CITES was extended to orchids, and USFWS came up with a major tightening of enforcement limiting what orchids could be moved. There were further tightenings of Cites, I think around 1993 and 1998. By 1990 (or 1995?) Ray Rands had decided it was just too difficult to import Paphs from most countries, he tried to shift to seed propagation, but that is a slow process, sorta like watching the grass grow. If you knew Ray, he was (still is) a very active, dynamic guy, the sort that is not happy watching grass grow. Importing was almost instantaneous, seed prop is slow. Ray eventually retired, giving up the business. Almost all commercial guys gave up trying to import, it was just too damn difficult. The CITES revision and resulting changes at USFWS made it a little easier to import some orchids in 2002. BUt basically, CITES pretty much completely killed the legal import market for Paphs, Phrags and Cyps. Fortunately I picked up some micranthum, armeniacum emersonii and malipoense right after they were discovered, I remeber the 1984 era Rands ad, he did not even have the name for emersonii yet, it was just a big white Paph from China. I also bought a couple emersonii from 'Doc' Emerson Charles, the guy that the species was named for. His 'Expose Yourself to Orchids' photo still makes the rounds occasionally. He got the knickname 'Doc' because he had run for county coroner in one of his forays into politics. He had no medical training to speak of. A fun guy to talk to. Most of the parvi's I picked up back then are still with me today. (knock on wood) So that was the 'good old days', no paperwork - anybody could be an importer, it was as simple as going to the post office. The bad news was, a location with a new showy orchid species could be wiped out in 4 weeks. (but wait?, even with CITES isn't that just what happened to kovachii?) so it is a differnt world we live in now. Now someone from the EU puts a picture up, the USA members all put up posts wringing their hands about how long will it take for this or that to be legal. I have accepted the fact that CITES won't go away, I didn't mind waiting until legal Phrag kovachii seedlings were available from Alfred Manrique. Rather than try to get new stuff - I now try to focus on keeping what I have healthy, because it can't be replaced. 
Cheers
Leo


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## Eric Muehlbauer (Apr 11, 2008)

The date can be pinpointed specifically- 1990. As of Jan 1990, all paphs and phrags became App. I for CITES. The impact wasn't felt the first year...Rands and the other importers sold the collected stock they had acquired before 12/31/1989...and prices did go up, but minimally. It was a good year- tigrinum was described, based on plants that came in previously, but that was end for cheap prices on paphs. I still have a 1990 price list from Maisie (the Ca branch) that apologizes for the price increases...we would kill for those prices now. Take care, Eric


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## mccallen (Apr 13, 2008)

Leo Schordje said:


> Strap in - its a long historical and folk-lorical tale.
> Well, depending on your political bend (tragety or victory) there are a couple ways to look at what happened. For me around 1980 or so I really got into Paphs. At that time the only import papers really needed were a Phytosanitary for Dept of Ag showing the plants were disease free. None of this CITES stuff, at that time CITES only pertained to Whales, Elephants and Tigers. THe plant references were still under negociation. Then in 1988 CITES was extended to orchids, and USFWS came up with a major tightening of enforcement limiting what orchids could be moved. There were further tightenings of Cites, I think around 1993 and 1998. By 1990 (or 1995?) Ray Rands had decided it was just too difficult to import Paphs from most countries, he tried to shift to seed propagation, but that is a slow process, sorta like watching the grass grow. If you knew Ray, he was (still is) a very active, dynamic guy, the sort that is not happy watching grass grow. Importing was almost instantaneous, seed prop is slow. Ray eventually retired, giving up the business.
> Leo




Thanks for the info. Too bad about the business, looking at old ads now is just taunting!


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