Paphiopedilum rothschildianum x sib (Miles x Giant Wings GM/WOC

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
How do you know that?
I have a little bit experience with blooming entire batches of rothschildianum seedlings maybe...

The dorsal is off, the shape and twisting of it, the petals are off, and the pouch does not have the proper shape for the type of cross it is supposed to be. It is neither cultural nor the 'genetic lottery'....
 
I have a little bit experience with blooming entire batches of rothschildianum seedlings maybe...

The dorsal is off, the shape and twisting of it, the petals are off, and the pouch does not have the proper shape for the type of cross it is supposed to be. It is neither cultural nor the 'genetic lottery'....
Now you have made the roth cry 😢
 
Well, I am on record as saying that there is not any bad Roths.
There are however, bad rulers. I find that ruler to be a bit distracting. Kind of lessens the impact of the flower.
It seems to me that the natural spread may be a lot closer to 7” rather then 8. I agree to that the dorsal is twisted to the left. It could be flatter too. The spotting on the dorsal becomes pronounced as you get in close. I also feel that the petals are too narrow as well.
I would have trouble parting with any Roth but after blooming three times without improving, I would need to reconsider.
 
Holy Cow!!
That has bloomed that way for three times? That could be my first exception.

No, but it is the second of three siblings to bloom deformed, and the third double spiked with one spike just being a sheath on a stick. We'll see how the flowers turn out on that one but it's odd that these sibling plants are having so many issues when I normally have no trouble blooming roths or other multis.

20230406_171057_copy_1500x2000.jpg
 
Well even with the deformity as it sits between your fingers I can see the beautifully marked dorsal. And there is a lot to like about that pouch!
What a shame.
 
Blooming them 3 times or 50 times won't change the parentage of it unfortunately... It is a commercial urban legend in fact to say ' wait some more years before making a comment or claim'. The size of the flower, number of flower will improve, but any fatal flaws in the genetics won't change by miracle, like the dorsal shape/flatness, the pouch lack of color, etc....

That's what was told by many not so scrupulous sellers, if it really looks different from the parents they wrote, well it must be because the plant is young. Next bloom, there was a culture problem. Next bloom, it was better to repot it and be careful that it is not too hot or not too cold when it blooms. Next bloom, it was recently repotted... And on and on.

This is from a totally different genetic background from the listed parents, as always with the roths from that very same source... and indeed it they are the old rothschildianum breeding type or random wild capsule type. The twisted dorsal, dorsal shape, and pouch color and shape are tell all.

The problem being not to know if people are happy to bloom those plants or not. The problem is that they must realize the flower shape and color is fixed in stone, and that they paid for a plant with a pedigree, and got a generic plant instead.
 
I agree, very "wild" looking. In other words, a very old cross from the 70smaybe.

Well I would have a theory actually. It might be as well a Charles E x Borneo...

When the Tonkin closed, they sold all their rothschildianum stock. This stock fully and completely disappeared, and it was kind of massive... and extremely cheap, the last days were at 2US per pot to liquidate all. There were many seedlings of Charles E x Borneo that never had bloomed, set back plants, runts etc...

They never reappeared on the market under this pedigree, though I am very certain they did not disappear. This might well be one of them. The flower looks a bit like what I would expect from the average Charles E x Borneo indeed....
 
I really do not care about the parentage. Maybe you do. I just want to give any Rothschidianum several chance to improve on the form, that's all. If it does it does, and if not, no harm done. Considering the prices paid for some of these plants, I am not about to jump ship early.
 
I really do not care about the parentage. Maybe you do. I just want to give any Rothschidianum several chance to improve on the form, that's all. If it does it does, and if not, no harm done. Considering the prices paid for some of these plants, I am not about to jump ship early.
Nothing wrong with that. I appreciate the diversity of roths and keep many older generation clones in my collection even though they are nowhere near the standard of modern line breeding.

But for consumers who want the potential for high flower quality and rely on parentage as an indication of that potential, we all get screwed by the proliferation of fake names on tags.
 
Well I would have a theory actually. It might be as well a Charles E x Borneo...

When the Tonkin closed, they sold all their rothschildianum stock. This stock fully and completely disappeared, and it was kind of massive... and extremely cheap, the last days were at 2US per pot to liquidate all. There were many seedlings of Charles E x Borneo that never had bloomed, set back plants, runts etc...

They never reappeared on the market under this pedigree, though I am very certain they did not disappear. This might well be one of them. The flower looks a bit like what I would expect from the average Charles E x Borneo indeed....
I doubt that is from Tonkin's leftovers if that is what you are implying here...Tonkins closed their operation back in the early 2000s.(?) After Jack passed, Val tried to keep the operation going for a little while...but in the end, she had to liquidate the business....good for her!
I was at her greenhouse in the summer of 2001 and picked up a "Borneo" X selfing, which I will treasure for sure. Ah, the good old days!
 
Last edited:
Congrats on blooming a roth, it's always a pleasure to see one in flower!

Since there's already an interesting discussion going on here, I figured I would throw in my 2 cents on something that's been mulling around in my mind. I'm interested to hear what people think about it. Mainly, when did we start conflating "wild" and "old-school" roths with "poorer flower quality by judging standards". That is to say 'Rex' and 'Mont Millais' are wild collected specimens, and they have incredible color and broad segments. To illustrate, here is a recent photo from TON of one of their flowerings of 'Mont Millais':Mont Millais FCC-RHS-AOS.png

The form, balance, color, and presentation of Mont Millais are still exceptional, even when compared with more recent line-bred roths, in my opinion. Even "old style" roths can have broad segments and bold striping. Here is a picture from the June 1936 issue of Orchids Magazine, featuring a roth (almost certainly wild-collected) bloomed by the orchid firm of Lager & Hurrell (Summit, New Jersey), that won first prize at the International Flower Show in New York:

AOS June 1936 Roth.png

To me, this "older style" (1936) "wild" roth is an almost dead-ringer to some of the roths that came out of the early generation of Orchid Zone crosses, and it's still of above-average quality by today's standard. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to put anyone down, and I'm so glad there are growers who appreciate and preserve different styles and breeding lines of rothschildianum. But I have just been thinking that the terms "wild type" and "old school" have morphed somewhat into euphemisms for roths that don't meet current breeding standards (which are entirely artificial). Perhaps this is a result of the Charles E x Borneo cross, which was one of the earliest commercially successful crosses, and tended to give progeny plants that don't meet today's judging standard. I guess my point is that "wild-type" and "old-school" roths can still be big, bold and beautiful, and that we're still in the relatively early days of line-breeding for this species. Even the latest, cutting-edge Paph Paradise crosses retain the fundamental aesthetics of wild plants, even ones photographed back in the 1930s!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top