mrhappyrotter
Grand Chupacabra
Phragmipedium tetzlaffianum (syn Phragmipedium × tetzlaffianum) × Phragmipedium humboldtii
I got a flask of these from Tom Kalina several years ago. So far they've all bloomed out with similarly great quality. Very dark pouches, large flowers, and vigorous growers! It's a real treat.
This particular plant is the smallest growing of them. It's basically one of the runts of the litter, so when it started spiking up, I wasn't expecting much, and it was a surprise either way because it's so much smaller than the others. Overall these are nice compact hybrids, with some being on the larger side of medium, but still quite manageable under lights. This one I would call small-medium.
I've actually been meaning to photograph this for awhile and I noticed today that the flowers are just now starting to show signs of aging so I thought it was now or never. The flowers have been surprisingly long lasting. Although they open up sequentially, the spike pretty much always ends up carrying a full load before the first one starts to fall. This one's a little low on flower count (2 & 3 flowers per spike), but given its small stature and the large size of the blooms, I'm fine with that.
I'm a little shaky on the taxonomy part of this. I know a lot of vendors and experts lean towards tetzlaffianum being a species, but I'm skeptical. I would love to be wrong, though, it has beautiful flowers and it would be super interesting if there were wild, natural populations of them. Just not worth the price that they fetch in the USA. So, if I can't afford to appreciate the real thing in my collection, I thought this hybrid would be a nice substitute and that's turned out to be the case.
I got a flask of these from Tom Kalina several years ago. So far they've all bloomed out with similarly great quality. Very dark pouches, large flowers, and vigorous growers! It's a real treat.
This particular plant is the smallest growing of them. It's basically one of the runts of the litter, so when it started spiking up, I wasn't expecting much, and it was a surprise either way because it's so much smaller than the others. Overall these are nice compact hybrids, with some being on the larger side of medium, but still quite manageable under lights. This one I would call small-medium.
I've actually been meaning to photograph this for awhile and I noticed today that the flowers are just now starting to show signs of aging so I thought it was now or never. The flowers have been surprisingly long lasting. Although they open up sequentially, the spike pretty much always ends up carrying a full load before the first one starts to fall. This one's a little low on flower count (2 & 3 flowers per spike), but given its small stature and the large size of the blooms, I'm fine with that.
I'm a little shaky on the taxonomy part of this. I know a lot of vendors and experts lean towards tetzlaffianum being a species, but I'm skeptical. I would love to be wrong, though, it has beautiful flowers and it would be super interesting if there were wild, natural populations of them. Just not worth the price that they fetch in the USA. So, if I can't afford to appreciate the real thing in my collection, I thought this hybrid would be a nice substitute and that's turned out to be the case.
