Could it be the true primulinum ???

[SelectOrchids]

Im sure the Asian market is huge and without scruples.

The orchid market in general. From where do you think those Taiwanese or Malaysian paph volonteanum, hookerae, stonei, etc... brought by the sellers are coming from? Jungle, for the volonteanum, even extremely fresh wild collected...

But there really is no pot plant market of species paphs in the US flooding the market with illicit species like hybrids.

That's true, China and Hong Kong are two of the largest market for jungle paphs used as pot plant, then Vietnam, Thailand...

In Europe, some people attempted to do the same with jungle callosum from Laos, they are so cheap, cheaper than even a seedling in flask... it's however marginal.

We are getting two contradictory stories from you and Sanderianum that 1) all species paphs are jungle collected and transshipped as "artificial prop" from giant Asian nurseries or 2) All species paphs are hybrids from massive seed growing Asian nurseries.

No, I and Lance never said that. I say that, if you get a blooming size volonteanum, sangii, sugiyamanum, hookerae, mastersianum, micranthum kwangsee, micranthum, armeniacum, malipoense, emersonii, and quite a lot more species, unless they have a proven pedigree, they are jungle collected plants. Same for parishii, anitum, aductum, randsii, most of the haynaldianum, ciliolare... The list is long.

On the other side, there are many 'seedlings' of paphs species that are fake, that is another fact. Places like Orchid Inn or Orchids Ltd are reliable, but Taiwan, Taiwan... and Europe even, are not safe for someone who wants to get the real deal, except a couple nurseries, and even so...

But if Sanderianum's contention is correct that all blooming size species plants are pilfered jungle collected plants, then the odds should be good that the identification of the plant is authentic. But if his other contention is correct that all species plants are actually illicit seed grown hybrids, then the market should not be depleting the wild of species plants for the cut flower trade.

I said that there are about 30-40 paph species that are nearly never offered from seed, IF they are really the species they are supposed to be and IF they are blooming size, that's a fact...

Roth, sukhakhulii, etc... of course are available from seed, but stuff like ciliolare or anitum, wow... Same for volonteanum and this kind of plant, and even micranthum and armeniacum, generic offered plants - not the AM sibs or that kind of stuff, of course, but the plants from the people who just sell 'p.micranthum blooming size'...

Nearly all the genuine blooming size plants of those species are jungle collected...

Now, regarding Lance book:

- His 'pretty good mix' with the sand and sheet moss is surprisingly pretty good to excellent to say the least, with specifically the sand and the sheet moss...
- We have to remember that on an overall, many plants looked healthier 20-30 years ago than now in commercial nurseries, on an average...
- Lance has been bashed for the story of this 'rust' that wiped out his collection. I can testify that such things indeed do happen. Many species are coming from the wild straight to US, Europe, and worldwide, then they are resold to hobbyists who have not enough access to proper fungicides and bactericides. I have seen some colletotrichium, xanthomonas, and a wide range of weird stuff. Fusarium is extremely common today, where it was a great rarity on paphs 30 years ago. An extremely famous commercial nursery had to dump benches and benches of award quality paphiopedilum and seedlings in central California after they got the new highly infective strain of phytophthora. Lance rust, maybe I got it some years ago, but with the new fungicides it has been a piece of cake to solve that problem...

The main problem, there are still too many imports from the wild, and they bring a lot of diseases in cultivation. Some can be cured, some cannot. Second, some large nurseries in Asia have poor fungicides and antibiotic practices, resulting in resistant strains of many diseases.

About jungle plants, think about many plants from the south american sellers, many plants from Asia, even sold in the USA - of course Orchid Limited is selling all art propagated species and hybrids, but many nurseries are not. Look at those jungle collected den. trantuanii:

And there are many examples here and there. Rick, as for bulbo mandibulare, there is only 1 collector/supplier in Sabah, who sells to many nurseries in Peninsular Malaysia. From there, they go to 3 nurseries in the USA. But they are jungle collected... Bulbo reticulatum, phal doweriensis blooming size, all that kind of things are jungle collected.

Now, each time there is a plant like that that enters a hobbyist collection, there is a huge risk of diseases... Paphs from Ambon as an example have a very hard to eradicate brevipalpus. mastersianum, mohrianum... I even think that some brevipalpus strains originated from Indonesia...

 

[slippertalker]

So Lance, you're saying that the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Orchid Identification Centre can't tell the difference between a species and a hybrid.....basically, the service they provide is a crock of s**t? Interesting...

Selby isn't in the identification business these days............so the answer is no they can't.

 

[SelectOrchids]

So Lance, you're saying that the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Orchid Identification Centre can't tell the difference between a species and a hybrid.....basically, the service they provide is a crock of s**t? Interesting...

Actually, they cannot make the difference between a species and an hybrid, and no taxonomist can do that for most tricky stuff...

Sometimes they are cheated very easily... The Kunming Botanical Garden made a program to try to breed primary hybrids for pot-plant. One of their hybrids - that has been offered to me in quantity, multiple growths, was dianthum x villosum. They have over 400 huge clumps of that one...

Olaf Gruss described Paph. xPetchleungianum based on one of those pot-plant.

Paph. dexlerianum is an hybrid as well, there are many cases like that. The taxonomists have no experience of the trade, and what is sold in the trade, so they can identify a species if it is a species, but in many cases cannot identify that a plant is a hybrid if the submitted plant is a scam...

 

[NYEric]

You're hired!

 

[WolfDog1 (C. Williams)]

WOW


Craig

 

[SlipperKing]

Wow what a lot of rambling over primulinum or not!oke:

 

[Kavanaru]

Wow what a lot of rambling over primulinum or not!oke:

to end up as "A primulinum is a primulinum is a primulinum is a primulinum..." oke:

P.S.- I understand the discussion here, but at the very end, we end up calling Paph primulinum what is sold as Paph primulinum and even awarded as primulinum, as nobody will ever change the labels of their primulinum even knowing they are not 100% primulinum and so on... so, my Paph primulinum 'Ching Hua #3' x 'Ching Hua #5' will stay as primulinum (same as it cousins 'CH #1 x CH #2' and any other CH # combinations), the same way it stay as primulinum at the different vendors selling it, and same way as all other "not true" primulinum stay labelled the same way...

P.S.- Just in case: the text above has a lot irony in it! ok?

 

[Hakone]

What is that?

 

[Pete]

theres a lot of variation with color, size, form of ALL species. but i myself know when a roth is a roth and a tigrinum is a tigrinum. it might sound stupid but you can tell some of the more distinct ones apart. cochlopetalum section might be more difficult. for example. there has been about a billion pictures articles and publications about rothschildianum. a generation for a roth is like 7 years. in order for a roth to not actually be a roth and have something else in it it would have to be crossed (i.e. to phillippinense) then back to the parent at least once, probly more times. and even then you would still be able to tell it wasnt a roth. oh and by the way thats like 20+ years of breeding..