Paph Season 2024

[Tony]

Starting the new year with a goofy platyphyllum 'Super Clone' × self.




If you followed my thread last year you may remember the batch of plants tagged as Hilo Black Eagle that turned out to be Hilo Bald Eagle. I have a second grex (or do I? The tags say so) of Hilo Black Eagle spiking this year and I've been bamboozled again. I'm going to make my own Hilo Black Eagles with blackjack and hookers.

 

[Tony]

And some more nonsense coming, this last batch of OI plants is turning out to be a mess.

 

[orchid527]

And some more nonsense coming, this last batch of OI plants is turning out to be a mess.

View attachment 44713

Tony

What do you mean by "mess"? Are you seeing poor quality or likely mislabeled plants? I have a bunch of these blooming this year, including some of this same cross. Mike

 

[Tony]

Mislabeled plants. PAM0246 rothschildianum 'Gigantic Dorsal' × Johanna Burkhardt 'Black Hole' bloomed out as Hilo Black eagles, I've bloomed 6 or 8 of my dozen. The one opening now is from PAM0252 rothschildianum 'Chia-Yi' × Wössner Black Wings GM/TPS and is clearly a stonei hybrid, likely Hilo Bald Eagle again. The plant in bud labeled as PAM0225 Hsinying Anita is some kind of sanderianum hybrid, we'll see if it is identifiable when it opens. I bloomed two seedlings from the Hsinying Anita grex on that label last year that were true to name, but they were from a former member who split a flask and not bought as seedlings from OI like the mislabeled one. There was clearly some kind of trouble with these late OI plants, whether it was lab error, contract grower error, or error at Sam's facility I couldn't say but there are a lot of misidentified plants out there now.

 

[orchid527]

Mislabeled plants. PAM0246 rothschildianum 'Gigantic Dorsal' × Johanna Burkhardt 'Black Hole' bloomed out as Hilo Black eagles, I've bloomed 6 or 8 of my dozen. The one opening now is from PAM0252 rothschildianum 'Chia-Yi' × Wössner Black Wings GM/TPS and is clearly a stonei hybrid, likely Hilo Bald Eagle again. The plant in bud labeled as PAM0225 Hsinying Anita is some kind of sanderianum hybrid, we'll see if it is identifiable when it opens. I bloomed two seedlings from the Hsinying Anita grex on that label last year that were true to name, but they were from a former member who split a flask and not bought as seedlings from OI like the mislabeled one. There was clearly some kind of trouble with these late OI plants, whether it was lab error, contract grower error, or error at Sam's facility I couldn't say but there are a lot of misidentified plants out there now.

Thanks for the info. My WBW x roth plants are from PAM0269, and the Hsinying Anitas are from PAM0240. I will keep my fingers crossed and will post photos when they bloom. I was with Sam when the plants were selected. They were the nicest from a large group of sibs. He was so meticulous with his greenhouse. It is very hard to imagine Sam's facility as the source of the problem, yet I am hearing this same story from many reliable people. Mike I

 

[DirGo]

Hey Tony... it must be painful to leave your "Paph Season 2023" with more than 19.000 views and more 300 replies behind. Amazing result: .

My sincere wish to you for this "Paph Season 2024" is to break that record in 2024 with even more beautiful paph pictures!
You started well; Good Luck!

 

[Tony]

Hey Tony... it must be painful to leave your "Paph Season 2023" with more than 19.000 views and more 300 replies behind. Amazing result: .

My sincere wish to you for this "Paph Season 2024" is to break that record in 2024 with even more beautiful paph pictures!
You started well; Good Luck!

Thank you, 2024 is looking like it will be even better.

 

[Tony]

The Not Hilo Black Eagle has turned out quite a bit beefier than any from the other grex that turned out to be Hilo Bald Eagles. I'm wondering if it may be Duke of Burgundy (Lady Isobel x Johanna Burkhardt) which was available at the same time. Hopefully it will become clearer as more bloom out what the mixup was.



The first two Wössner Black Wings of the season: A first bloom from roths 'Leo' × anitum 'Ace', not anything earth-shattering but it is decent looking and has three flowers on a small plant so I'll probably keep it around to see if it improves.



This one was a select plant from Hilo Orchid Farm of roths 'H.J. #4' × anitum 'Shih-Yueh'. It crashed hard as so many Hawaiian multis seem to do after shipping and has taken three years to gain the strength to bloom again. Nowhere near its potential yet with only two flowers and a funky double staminode but there is nowhere to go but up now lol



I've had this Sunlight Anita for five years now and I'm always happy to see it bloom again. This was one of the first plants I bought to cheer myself up after my old greenhouse froze and I started to rebuild my collection and it will always have a home here because of that sentimental value.



We're barely into the new year and I'm already going to break the rules of my own thread to sneak in a couple of pouchless weirdos, forgive me. After ignoring them for far too long I started to take an interest in Catts last year and these two have me hooked.

Cattleya trianae 'Mary Fennel' HCC/AOS



Cattleya trianae 'Frank'

 

[NEslipper]

Really like that Sunlight Anita, and good job rescuing that WBW, it’s going to be great in the future! The Mary Fennell is a classic, love to see some catts thrown in there!

 

[Tony]

Another Hilo select Wössner Black Wings is opening now, it didn't crash as hard as its sibling and has a pretty decent bloom this year, I look forward to seeing it continue to improve.



The "Hsinying Anita" is open now and has shown itself to be a nondescript sanderianum hybrid. The closest fit I could find in Orchid Inn's offerings at the time I bought it is Crowning Glory (sanderianum x JB/WBW) but I'm not confident in that ID and since it is a dull flower anyway it will go on our society raffle table as a NOID. I really haven't wanted to think poorly of Sam but the more I bloom from those final sales the more it feels like we've been had by a classic exit scam. It's getting harder to be excited by first blooms of Orchid Inn plants when so many turn out to be mislabeled.

 

[SlipperKing]

Another Hilo select Wössner Black Wings is opening now, it didn't crash as hard as its sibling and has a pretty decent bloom this year, I look forward to seeing it continue to improve.

View attachment 44959

The "Hsinying Anita" is open now and has shown itself to be a nondescript sanderianum hybrid. The closest fit I could find in Orchid Inn's offerings at the time I bought it is Crowning Glory (sanderianum x JB/WBW) but I'm not confident in that ID and since it is a dull flower anyway it will go on our society raffle table as a NOID. I really haven't wanted to think poorly of Sam but the more I bloom from those final sales the more it feels like we've been had by a classic exit scam. It's getting harder to be excited by first blooms of Orchid Inn plants when so many turn out to be mislabeled.

View attachment 44960

Tony,
I'm thinking it maybe Gorgan. Shin-Yi Williams by sanderianum. Very similar to one I bloomed from Sam.

 

[Tony]

Carter & Holmes and the Carolinas Judging Center hosted an outreach judging event yesterday and we came home with three AMs to Hung Sheng Cape 'Bitis Botanical', Sunlight Anita 'Bitis Botanical', and Wössner Black Wings 'Mr Boops'. We have a running theme of memorializing special pet snakes from our past collection with cultivar names, Mr. Boops was our rhino viper. Pics of the Hung Sheng Cape will follow soon.

 

[Justin]

Fan(g)tastic! Congrats!

 

[Djthomp28]

Wonderful!! Congrats!

 

[GuRu]

Congrats to the awards and the awarded plants ... they really look great.

 

[tnyr5]

Oh yes. Please...boop da viper.

 

[spujr]

Well done congrats!

 

[Duck Slipper]

Beautiful plants...Snake too!!

 

[Tony]

I have a lot of catching up to do on picture taking, but for the moment here are the results of today's judging.

I took Wössner Black Wings 'Gabby' in hoping for an upgrade to FCC from the prior 84 point AM. Two judges scored her at 90, but the other two were lower and ended in an upgrade to an 87 point AM. I'm confident that in another blooming or two those last 3 points will appear.



Wössner Black Wings 'Powderpuff' is a first bloom seedling from Krull-Smith breeding and is the flattest WBW I've ever seen. I thought this might be one the judges would kick back and ask to see again on a future blooming, but they were so impressed by the flatness and color that it also ended up with an 87 point AM despite being a bit small. The future for this one is looking bright.

The final award of the day is an 80 point AM to Hirohisa's Ruby 'Neil Kim' which was entrusted to my care by @Happypaphy7. I'm sure it is the first award of many to come from Neil's wonderfully curated collection.

 

[Djthomp28]

Wow, Tony. Those are stunning.