Paph. amabile 'Charles' CBM-AM/AOS

[tim]

Along the lines of historic species paphs, this is one for me that stands out. I just love the appletonianum-bullenianum complex. It's such a mess and it amuses me to no end attempts by taxonomists to put names on a species that is in the active process of speciation!! Maybe Xavier or someone else can chime in and enlighten us as to the myriad names of this complex. Really I don't care!! I do try to keep a few representatives of each "species" from this group, where I can find them, and am particlarly happy to find the CBM clones of each of the species or line bred species from the CBM clones. For example, I have the CBM hainanense, a robinsonii from a shipment by Ray Rands, and seedlings of wolterianum 'Maybrook' x self, even though I can't for the life of me find a piece of 'Maybrook' itself. Anyway I like this group alot.

This is the only amabile to ever ben "imported", and has been selfed many times (all the other amabiles have resulted from selfings of it). It recieved its CBM in 1969 and its AM in 1975, having to travel some 400 miles from the collection of Carl and Imogene Keyes in LA area to Sacramento to get its quality award. Paph. amabile was first described in 1865 from West Borneo, and then collected by Hallier in 1893 in West Borneo again; the type of bullenianum has reddish mottling on the bottoms of the leaf and was originally collected in Sarawak. I don't know about staminodes and all that, but I can tell you amabile does not fit the type description for bullenianum - I like that it's showy and easy to grow!! I've selfed it again this year; hopefully I can continue to propagate things like this as definite lines, without interbreeding with anything else the RHS or AOS considers bullenianum...

 

[SlipperKing]

Nice treat you have! thanks for the info as well.

 

[Rick]

Very nice.

Can you show us some whole plant pics?

 

[tim]

no...this is a cut flower; the plant's down in the greenhouse an hour away...it looks like an appletonianum - light green leaves with darker mottling, and light green on the undersides...

 

[Lance Birk]

Tim,

I'm glad to see your photos and description of this plant. I had a division of it many years ago, from the Keyes, and now I have one of the seedlings about ready to bloom. Can't wait to see if it is the same.

This is NOT a bullenianum, it is more aligned with the appletonianums. Especially characteristic of this plant are the wildly erratic and distinct leaf patterns. Please show photos.

This type comes from Gunong Tahan in Malaysia and it has only been collected one time, supposedly, I'd like Michael Ooi to send his trackers out to try finding it again.

Do self it again.

Ohh, I just saw that you cut it off!!!

Incidentally, I saw a herbarium sheet of this at Bogor, in Java, in 1978, so it must have been collected sometime after the Japanese destroyed the herbarium there during the war.

 

[tim]

It had 4 flowers and I did self it...I forgot to take the camera to the greenhouse...

Interesting that Gunung Tahan is in peninsular Malaysia, but all the early records of the species are Borean...

Glad there's a sheet of it somewhere and I hope it's IDed correctly, especially if collected on Java...

Lance, maybe you could expound on the differences between it an other relatives? Leaf tips, staminodes, floral characters, geography, etc...

I have a seedling (called 'Geer's') from an early selfing that has the finest leaf patterns of any appletonianum-group thing I've seen; I guess it originates from B. Geer down near San Diego.

 

[swamprad]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing the photos and the information!

 

[SlipperFan]

That has a riot of colors and patterns.

 

[Lance Birk]

In 1978 I photographed all the Paphiopedilum herb sheets, including a couple of jars of liquid-preserved specimens in the Bogor Botanic Garden, in Java. There were about 100 of them and I have the photos all packed away in my photo library. I'm sorry, but I just don't have time to sort through them just now, but I do recall seeing at least one sheet of "P. amabile."

To set the record straight, the specimen was not collected in Java, and as I recall, the sheet was made before the war. This brings to question the statement by Johannis Mogea, the herbarium director, that the Japanese had destroyed ALL the museum records. This sheet could have been loaned from another herbarium, ... or who knows the origin.

It also raises the problem with many herb sheets which list erroneous collection data. It's a common problem with taxonomy although taxonomists are trained to use the information they have at hand. Few taxonomists ever step out of their laboratory; maybe I should say..... they NEVER do!

That's why a few of us used to go out to find the REAL truth.

If you want to know the differences between the amabilies and the bullenianums, etc., you need to read my book(s). Sorry Tim, I've already spent an awful lot of time putting my growers' manuals and I can't repeat it all here.

 

[etex]

Lovely bloom! Thank you for the info!!

 

[UweM]

Hi tim,

your shown plant will be offered in Germany as amabile from Vietnam or adjacent states...

But the original amabile comes from Mt. Kelam in West-Borneo (Orchid Digest).

Your heart like staminode looks like robinsonii or cerveranum

Here some flowering plants from last year, this plant was offered as:
amabile, bullenianum, cerveranum, appletonianum

I think it's cerveranum/robinsonii....

In the last years chinese taxonom described this heart like Paphs. as:
angustifolium, puberulum and tridentatum...

 

[tim]

This is why this is such an interesting group to collect. Are the little differences in the staminodes sufficient to call things seperate species? Or are we looking at a generalist with a high degree of variability in flower shape and color and leaf shape and color, where none of those factors adversely affect pollination? I guess I have a very hard time agreeing with this new set of species, since the differences in staminodes shape can be more or less marked each time a flower blooms. I have a set of hainanense from Rands where the staminode shapes are different on each clone, but the flower color is the same and the collection location is the same.

In particular reference to this key, a large number of original illustrations of appletonianum show mucronate staminodes, and I generally considered bullenianum to have a staminode missing a mucro. How do the previously described species fit in here? Where is this published? Part of the problem with most of the original species descriptions is that they fail to describe differences between "new" species and previously described ones. How does appletonianum differ from amabile or how does celebensis or ceramensis differ from appletonianum? yes they live on different islands...is that it?

 

[UweM]

yes - a very interested group. But plants of the "real" bullenianum group a very difficult to get.

Here a very good overview of this group:

http://www.orchidando.net/pages/21h3.htm

 

[SlipperFan]

I'm glad I'm not a taxonomist.