Paphiopedilum ID (Help needed)

[Kavanaru]

A friend of mine sent me these pictures of his "Paph. lowii", which it is obviously not... the plant arrived labelled like that from Australia (bougt at an orchdis exhibition in Switzerland) and my friend bought only because he liked the leaves and to try his first Paphiopedilum... This is the first time bloom...

The pictures are not very good, but you can somehow recognize some features of the plant... I will try to get better photos soon)

Thanks for your help...

 

[Brian Monk]

lowii x barbata type? Maybe x lawrenceanum?

 

[emydura]

Appletonianum. Or maybe a hybrid involving this species. It looks a bit different from the species or may be it is just the photo. It looks pure Barbata to me.

David

 

[Kavanaru]

I cannot see any lowii in it... I thinkit is pure barbata too, but I do not very well the species in this group... looking at the pictures in Birk's book, I thought of appletonianum, linii, bullenianum?

 

[Rick]

The picture is fuzzy, but appletonianum or bulenianumn

even with the fuzzy pic it looks a lot like my P. tortisepalum (which may just be a var. of bullenianum)

 

[GuRu]

Appletonianum. Or maybe a hybrid involving this species. It looks a bit different from the species or may be it is just the photo. It looks pure Barbata to me. David

David, that would be my guess too. This bloom seems to be pretty close to appletonianum but obviously not a straight appletonianum. The leaves arn't any help because there exist on the one hand appletonianums with really intense mottled leaves and on the other hand such with almost plain green leaves.

 

[Ernie]

Maybe appletonianum X superbiens/curtisii or ciliolare (but I'd expect more dorsal stripes from that???)

The staminode is oval, right? Any projections etc? "Pincers" at the bottom?

 

[tim]

the appletonianum complex is one of the most actively speciating groups of paphs. All the "species" within this complex - appletonianum, hainanense, wolterianum, celebensis, robinsonii, etc probably represent members of a complex that will eventually become species due to geographic isolation or pollinator specificity or something along those lines. Thus there are many different interpretations of whether these things are true species. Perhaps this particular plant represents some intergrade of appletonianum with another member of this complex, but I'd feel very comfortable just calling it an appletonianum.

I have a number of members of this group and try to stay within "species" when making outcrossings, using plants with known provenance from direct importation or from sibs of imported species. For example, wolterianum 'Maybrook' is jungle collected plant from Cambodia imported in the mid 1970s. I don't have this specific clone (maybe someone does, maybe it is still alive I hope) but I have a bunch of selfings of it, which all display the same lack of distinct leaf mottling, etc. Same with robinsonii - I have two jungle-collected clones and have sibbed them. I love this group and have lots of files on them including most of the original descriptions and illustrations...if you want more specifics, fire away.

 

[Rick]

http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12983

for closer to side by side comparison The whole thread shows both a bullenium (the tortipetalum) and appletonianum (var. hainanense) complex flowers.

I was tending a little more towards the bullenium side of things for two reasons.
1) the dark stripe down the middle of the petal bases, and
2) since it was called a "lowii" could this have some source origions to Borneo where you would be in the middle of the bullenium complex rather than Vietnam for the appletonianum mess?

 

[SlipperKing]

bullenianum is my vote. Based on the staminode. Of course I could be wrong seeing how I had to turn my monitor on it's side to view it!oke:

PS typical leaves for bullenianum too.

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

celebesens?

 

[Rick]

celebesens?

As a form or another variant of bullenianum I'd go for that too Eric.

most of the pics of celebesens that I could find showed a more distinctive mid petal stripe, and a few extra spots on the lower half of the leaf like this one.

 

[tim]

lol - the original description of bullenianum is completely different than what is pictured, especially the leaves. True bullenianum has very dark red leaf undersides and more gray than green markings on the upper parts of the leaves. The variety torti-whatever (sepalum or petalum, they are both named varieties) should not even be classified under bullenianum sensu stricto due to the gross morphologic differences in the foliage, and was given varietal status due solely to the twisting of the petals a full 180 degrees. A cursory search of appletonianum on google shows many plants with both twisted and non-twisted petals.

see here for true-type bullenianum:
http://www.orchidweb.com/detail.aspx?id=508

 

[NYEric]

I hope my camera is having fun in balmy Europe!

 

[labskaus]

My vote would be bullenianum for the oblong staminode (H-shaped?), the appletonianums tend to have a stam that is wider than high, from what I've seen, whatever the particular shape may be called (heart-shaped, transverse elliptic, ....).
Tim, Reichenbach didn't mention the purple underleaf colour in his original description. Do you have a pic of the type sheet/drawing?

 

[slippertalker]

This is a very tortured and taxonomically difficult group of species. Over time, small differences in the flower usually based on staminode shapes have created some different names. Add in the names that importers such as Rands placed on these things and even more confusion reigns.

My guess is that this was imported at Paph linii, hence the confusion as lowii. As Tim has indicated there are populations that are seperate thus they form variant versions of what are pretty closely related species. Even within these populations are variations in color, shape, size, foliage, etc. Some of them are intergrades with other similar species which adds to the problem.

Bottom line is that is subject to the eyes of the observer which often don't see enough of a sampling to have a valid conclusion.

 

[Kavanaru]

interesting discussion... thanks a lot!

here new pics, with better quality...

 

[Rick]

lol - the original description of bullenianum is completely different than what is pictured, especially the leaves. True bullenianum has very dark red leaf undersides and more gray than green markings on the upper parts of the leaves. The variety torti-whatever (sepalum or petalum, they are both named varieties) should not even be classified under bullenianum sensu stricto due to the gross morphologic differences in the foliage, and was given varietal status due solely to the twisting of the petals a full 180 degrees. A cursory search of appletonianum on google shows many plants with both twisted and non-twisted petals.

see here for true-type bullenianum:
http://www.orchidweb.com/detail.aspx?id=508

Are you suggesting that torti-whatever is a variety of appletonianum rather than bullenianum? Or a whole separate species?

I think the whole pile from Laos to Borneo and the surrounding islands are so similar they could all be just variants of one super variable species, but I think some significant consideration should be given to geography. Despite the "gross morphological differences in foliage" (which I have found for torti to be highly variable depending on growing conditions and nutrition), torti I believe would be a highly disjunct population of an "appletonianum" variant surrounded by "bullenianum" variants. Which wouldn't make a lot of sense ecologically.

 

[Ernie]

Was reading Braem & Chiron tonight just for fun... I can certainly go along with bullenianum.

 

[John M]

FWIW, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the photo was tortipetalum. I used to have some of these and this flower looks exactly like the torti's that I had.....assuming that my plants were correctly labelled. They originated from Simanis orchids in Malaysia.