Any Ideas?

[kellyincville]

I cannot offer an educated opinion like the others but I have to stop in and comment on that beautiful striped pouch. Wow, that's a stunner!


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[gonewild]

I showed the picture to michael Lo, he knows the plants of that region well.
He said he has never see it before.
According to him rothschildianum is only found in Mount Kinabalu and no other locations.
I asked him if Maliau has been completely explored for the plants and he said it is a very big basin and is still 80% unexplored by people.

He agrees with my thought that if you are certain it is from Maliau, then it should be either a new species or a sub species variety of roth.

It's enough different from what you have shown that it probably is an undescribed species since it does not like the same environmental conditions.

 

[SlipperFan]

That pouch is like nothing else. Please contact Dr. Guido Braem and send him photos of flower parts. He can help. I can pm you his email address if you don't have it. Or look under B for Braem in our members list and contact him via his email.

 

[paphioboy]

Interesting. What about full plant pics compared to what you consider to be a normal roth?

I hope the discovery of this new 'species' or variety does not lead to a flurry of overcollecting (wishful thinking). As it is, roth is being collected to near extinction. I see wild plants offered for sale everyday on the web..

 

[naoki]

Interesting, Gary. The bottom side of the lip doesn't have a fold like stonei, does it (the original description of P. elliottianum by O'Brien)? How long is the ovary? It looks pretty long.

 

[Trithor]

have you selfed one yet?

Some years ago I did make a sibling cross, but the pod did not hold. That was prior to me starting my own flasking, also they have proved to be very shy bloomers. I will definitely try again.

How sure are you on its collecting location as Maliau?

I cannot be sure. I bought these plants many years ago from a collector/dealer, and always viewed the provenance as more of a sales ploy than anything else. I tried to make contact with the seller some years ago, but was told that he had passed away some years prior.

Interesting. Have you bloomed any before this one and have any besides this clone exhibited similar pouch markings? The Maliau Basin is not very close to Gunong Kinabalu, 90-100 miles SSE, so perhaps not a roth variant - but it sure has that roth. "bent knee" look to the staminode.

I have flowered various plants over the years, from memory they were all very similar.

Interesting. What about full plant pics compared to what you consider to be a normal roth?

I hope the discovery of this new 'species' or variety does not lead to a flurry of overcollecting (wishful thinking). As it is, roth is being collected to near extinction. I see wild plants offered for sale everyday on the web..

I will take some comparative pictures later today. This plant is not a recent acquisition, so a flurry of collecting is extremely unlikely, especially seeing the original collector passed away many years ago.

Interesting, Gary. The bottom side of the lip doesn't have a fold like stonei, does it (the original description of P. elliottianum by O'Brien)? How long is the ovary? It looks pretty long.

I will be sure to pay attention to these details later with my comparative pictures.

 

[Ozpaph]

This is getting exciting - "garyotianum".....................

 

[eteson]

Very interesting Gary. The pouch is very disctinctive.
Contact to Guido Braem.

 

[Trithor]

When I posted this picture, I was not anticipating the discussion it would generate. I will hunt through my files to see if I can find the paperwork from this original import, but I am not sure if I have anything that goes back quite this far. Up till now I have been basing my replies on what is written on the pot label and memory.
In the mean time, here are a few more pictures;

A side by side comparison of 'runt' with a smallish sized roths (NS 20cm)



A side on/profile picture



'Runt's' ovary. Quite long (measuring 77mm) and also quite hirsute (although not as obvious in the picture as it is in reality)



and for comparison the ovary of the roths, which is shorter measuring 55mm and glassy smooth. Also a different shape

 

[Rick]

mutant roth!

There's no other species with anything close to roth with a staminode like that.

But the difference between this flower and a standard roth are pretty obvious. So provided its a legit wild plant (and not a GH hybrid), I'd say it's definitely something new. Pretty exciting to see such a different flower with that distinct roth staminode.


On the other hand, how many bloomings have these plants gone through since you considered your culture optimized for these plants? I had a straight roth that bloomed normally the first couple years, and then it started stunting and getting erwinia a lot. It ended up producing a bunch of very small flowers (1/2 size) just before it finally died. The colors were intense, but the pouches still never looked like this. So I've experienced that roths can produce weird stunted flowers when things aren't right. So could this be a legacy flower from past off culture conditions?

If you think culture and blooms have been stable for 3 or 4 rounds then its probably not a culture outcome.

 

[MaryPientka]

I'm very excited for you! Good luck with your quest.

 

[Rick]

Here's a couple pics of the runt flowers an old RIP roth produced before it collapsed in 2009. The cross was eurekaXrex and in 2006, 2007 it produced awesome flowers more than 25cm across.

The pouch on your flowers is still way different than for these flowers, and your plants are on the upswing and not the downswing (health wise). But these pics show that a roth in bad shape can still produce small weird flowers.

 

[Rick]

In some ways this reminds me of the differences between a big lowii and richardianum

That one is argued every other week on whether richardianum is a separate species or variety of lowii.

 

[NYEric]

I was talking with Olaf Gruss today. I wish I had seen this before. Very interesting!

 

[PaphMadMan]

Taking another look at this...

It seems like the pouch has lost some of its "pouchiness" - taken on some color and pattern from the striping on the petals and sepals, flattened out a bit. Along with the petal differences from roth, this could possibly be due to differences in just a couple genes controlling petal development - a small genetic difference accounting for the differences from roth in floral anatomy. Along with the diminutive size, it is the kind of adaptation you might expect from a population that started from a small founder group, adapting to survive in a different (maybe cooler or less fertile) environment, adapting to new pollinators.

That has no bearing on whether it would be considered a new taxon. That depends on it being a stable, isolated, natural population. Just that it could be a rather small and easily explained evolutionary step from roth to this.

 

[Trithor]

Thank you all for your input. I have spent the last two days hunting paperwork from this original import. The older the paperwork, the more difficult it is to find As I can now confirm, all communication prior to 1992 was via fax with 'Heat sensitive paper' and as time goes by these documents have the tendency to fade !
What I have found is the original import permit issued by our department of Agriculture for the plants (only part of a much larger consignment of more regular paphs from 10 June 1987. These permits were only usable for 12 months after the date of issue, so I would have to have completed the import during the period 06/87 to 06/88. With this narrowed window I was able to trace the original import to November '87. These plants formed part of an importation of a fairly large number of plants ex Kota. My notes that follow bring more information to the transaction. It would appear that there was a lot of 'boxing' relating to the shipment! I had agreed to buy what was supposedly the only 17 plants of this 'new' plant collected/ On arrival there were only 6 plants with a varied number of growths per each. No counting of mature or mature plus new could arrive at a number of 17. In any case the original number 0f 6 plants according to my records only 5 were viable. I am left with 3 viable and one very sad plant near 27 years later! (not too bad I think, although with good culture and propagation they should number in the thousands!) I have selfed this plant this afternoon, although I was hoping to rather sib/outcross the plant, but the remaining plants show no inclination to bloom.

 

[Trithor]

Oh, and currently the plant has been labelled as 'stressed roths/nat hybrid'
I think the results of the selfing will be informative? (In how many years?!)

 

[Rick]

Oh, and currently the plant has been labelled as 'stressed roths/nat hybrid'
I think the results of the selfing will be informative? (In how many years?!)

Probably looking at least 5 years from pollination. My seedlings have really sped up with my culture changes:wink: Maybe we'll see something for my 60th birthday (that's only in 4 years)

 

[Rick]

Interesting. The Maliau Basin is not very close to Gunong Kinabalu, 90-100 miles SSE, so perhaps not a roth variant - but it sure has that roth. "bent knee" look to the staminode.

Just for perspective look at the ranges of lowii and philipinense and all their variants.

Even the brand new cahnii was found to have a distant population in Laos hundreds of miles away from it's original find in N Vietnam.

So I don't think this distance would be out of the question for a stray roth variant, but it sure is cool to find something this distinct off of Mt Kinabalu.:wink:

 

[SlipperKing]

I was going to suggest "the original description of P. elliottianum by O'Brien" but Naoki beat me to it. The future will be interesting with this one!