Paph. rothschildianum var. album

[Jpari]

Hi Folks,
Curiosity has gotten the best of me. I see an alba variety of many species Paphs., however, I have never seen nor heard of an alba form of Paph. rothschildianum. Has anyone ever seen or heard of such a plant?

 

[monocotman]

No. There was a notorious scam using a doctored photo a few years ago of album roth. They were offering seedlings. Some people lost a lot of money.

 

[Linus_Cello]

Has anyone made a st swithin with alba philippinese, and then selfed it for an alba st swithin?

 

[tnyr5]

Norito Hasegawa did it more than a decade ago. Here's one of James Fang's from Facebook circa 2016:

Very pretty, but smaller than a standard SS. It's going to be a long time till we go through 1-2 more rounds of two-step breeding before we see flowers that truly look like an album roth, I think.

 

[Jpari]

Well, after seeing that picture, I can't say that I prefer the album form of Saint Swithen to the standard coloratum form. However, that's just my opinion.

 

[Tom-DE]

Actually, I really do like the green flowers of SS (supposed?...), I just don't like to see them breed it further to make it look like a fake rothchidianum...that would be a sin!

 

[spujr]

This is about as close you can get to an rothschildianum var album (though not a "true" roth):

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?st...X3t8JX45cl&id=100057325125474&mibextid=CDWPTG

 

[Jpari]

Wow, that is really close to the appearance of what an alba roth would look like. I wonder how large that plant is?

 

[Clark Thomas Riley]

It is curious that no albiforum formas of rothschildianum have appeared given the now-huge number of seedlings out there. It's possible there is a critical genetic pathway involved where the f. album would be lethal. Just speculation. For instance, in the non-orchid world, Mertensia virginica f. alba is incredibly rare despite colonies of millions. At the same time, breeding for ever darker roths has been very successful.

 

[Ozpaph]

Probably because a large number of modern roths come from only a few jungle collected plants

 

[SelectOrchids]

Probably because a large number of modern roths come from only a few jungle collected plants

Many rothschildianum have been wild collected over the decades, even today, but few will survive to bloom.

Nearly all the albino paphs that are in cultivation came out of 2 things:

- wild collected individual, that's maybe 95% of all the albinos known.
- or selfings of a plant, that's how we got the albinos of hennissianum, fowlei, lunatum, and possibly kolopakingii.

sukhakhulii album came from the selfing of a wild collected aureum. There has never been a wild sukhakhulii album found until today.

Millions of Paph delenatii were produced over the decades, none ever bloomed albino. The albinos all came from one colony in Viet Nam that had a couple dozen alba plants. They are the origin of all the alba delenatii. On the other side, the 'dunkel' form of delenatii was an entire individual, separate colony.

To get albino roths would require selfing the 'right' coloratum plant that has a genetic defect responsible for albinism, whilst being impossible to see visually. And the trend for roths is more to cross different individuals together. As for wild roths, I saw at least on 3 occasions pictures of very light color/green stems on roths in the wild. One is around too on Flickr. Those plants have never been bloomed.