What is the best roth cross?

[BrucherT]

I do not believe Sam would do anything dishonest.

 

[Theodoreorchidking]

I do not believe Sam would do anything dishonest.

I second that

 

[Justin]

Hello everyone!!! I am looking for a new paph rothchildianum and wanted to know what is the best cross I can get? I have been looking at orchid inn and saw some raptor and Tarantula crosses. Size is the main priority and color can have some give. I know that price usually is a good indicator, from a reliable source, on how good the cross is but I thought I would ask the forum. Also if anyone has some recommendations on long pedal paphs I am all ears.
Happy growing!!!

Lateat photo of Tarantula from TON:

 

[SelectOrchids]

I second that

Well, never make assumptions... but that part is closed.

Now, from a nursery I know is honestly doing the crosses and the parents, we have that:

https://www.slippertalk.com/threads/paph-rothschildianum-hulk-sm-tps-x-sib-reachout-self.55152/
As we can see, we can recognize the parents, color, shape, etc...

From In-Charm, most of everything that bloomed looks like the parents, for certain. What are the odds for that vs. a lot of generic Charles E/wild flowers roths blooming out of 'Raptor' 'Knight's Challenge', etc..., and absolutely not a single one with proper flowers?

 

[SelectOrchids]

Lateat photo of Tarantula from TON:

It is a photo that is over 15 years old... I would love to see photos since that one. Tarentula is a nice roth, though it has to be grown in a.... 'specific way' to reach that flower size ( meikakke/flower spikes removal, etc...).

 

[Tom Reddick]

Question for all as I have not seen photos of any of the parents, I just got a number of robust seedlings of the following two crosses. They were not cheap, but that actually caught my interest since with roth it is usually a good sign of high expectations,

'Wide Spread' x 'King Kong'
'King Kong' x 'Humongous"

 

[SelectOrchids]

Question for all as I have not seen photos of any of the parents, I just got a number of robust seedlings of the following two crosses. They were not cheap, but that actually caught my interest since with roth it is usually a good sign of high expectations,

'Wide Spread' x 'King Kong'
'King Kong' x 'Humongous"

There are no photos of these anywhere... As a general rule with roths, no picture of the parents = not good.

I am going to bloom my Mt Millais once again, so I take a photo ( my own photo, one more time), then it is a proof that the plant has bloomed with me, and that I can have seedlings of them later. What disturbs me in several offers is that most of the roths cultivars only show the original photo by the original owner... or no photo at all.

I remember a certain roth 'Colossus' from the Orchid Zone that was an amazing, fantastic parent. NBS were 200, some 300us with wider leaves, flowered ones ended up as 50us pot plant pretty much all around the place, including Las Vegas, or were simply culled... I have to say that as a lettuce, those had huge leaves...

The worst of the worst of the Colossus plants was Chester Hill x Colossus so far. Not one bloomed normal...

So it is important that you have photos of the parents, and check them with Google Lens... You have no idea how many times I got photos of Raptor or from Japanese websites as 'parents' by some famous growers...

 

[emydura]

Question for all as I have not seen photos of any of the parents, I just got a number of robust seedlings of the following two crosses. They were not cheap, but that actually caught my interest since with roth it is usually a good sign of high expectations,

'Wide Spread' x 'King Kong'
'King Kong' x 'Humongous"

Here is King Kong. Six flowers on a first flowering seedling, dorsal more than 7 cm with great colour. Pretty impressive. I believe Sam was really excited about the 'King Kong' x 'Humongous" cross. He has high expectations. I am growing up a flask of this cross myself.

 

[Ozpaph]

I saw that photo, too, before I purchased that cross.

 

[Tom Reddick]

Thank you @emydura - like Roth, I was not able to find photos of any of the parents, so I was wondering a bit what to expect.

I like what you have shown me! Here's hoping for good results.

 

[Royal Rea]

'Jordan Winter' is an amazing rothschildianum. It is ( Charles E x Borneo) x Borneo for the parentage...

For the Taiwanese ones, well, they made a huge jump from 6 cm around wide dorsal to 8-9, at the same time the Sunlight Sky Roths started to bloom with the same dorsal size... Some have a weird dorsal or some oddities, like too round dorsal, or the pouch under certain light that is more pinkish than brownish... but overall they 99% look like a rothschildianum, only of size unknown before. many with the 8-9cm dorsals are as well first bloom seedlings too, and at many nurseries/growers at the same time in Taiwan. It could of course be a miracle, but I am not so sure...

Jordan Winter or all the others are smaller, but they are clumps. For the award size, individual petals were 18cm when awarded, and Frank bloomed it again where it exceeded 40cm, which makes sense when the petals are more horizontal...

Many of those gigantic roths were owned and exhibited by the same people who exhibited as well plants of Sunlight Sky Roths, so the case is very clear after all... I would expect some of them to make flowers over 40cm, but they remain hybrids.

It is the same with Woessner Black Wings when you compare to rothschildianum and anitum. Some of the selected ones have flowers that are much, much bigger than anitum, sometimes even double the size of anitum.

Except that now, it is rothschildianum hybrids that have enough hybrid vigor to make gigantic flowers ( confirmed by genuine Sunlight Sky Roths), and sold as rothschildianum. The same applies to sanderianum, I saw myself in flower recently Shin-Yi Sanders x sanderianum. They looked like absolutely gigantic sanderianum. One defect in many of them though was that the dorsal had a full stripe in the middle, where sanderianum has a broken line. Some however were perfect, 1m+ sanderianums... and already come in the trade.

Some breeders understood the logic behind the highly selected callosum and callosum vini ( all Maudiae hybrids...), the lawrenceanum hyeanum made out of various Maudiae ( barely resemble the original lawrenceanum album, or any lawrenceanum for that matter...), primulinum 4n supergiant ( Pinnochio Geel from Floricultura pot plant offer...), moquetteanum album ( never existed, again a Pinnochio Geel F2 from Floricultura, the 'species' was found in a pot plant nursery in Germany...), spicerianum made with Bruno, charlesworthii made with King Charles, 99.5% of the Thai leucochilum and godefroyae made with bellatulum, a shot of ang thong here and there ( Mu, the source for most of the leucochilum and godefroyae breeding, told me that it was important to bloom them and discard the ones that had 'mutations', AKA the ones looking like S. Gratrix. he had benches of them for sale, with tags removed, or not... Jo close to Chiang Mai told me the same back then, 20 years ago, the same for white flowered round concolor, they have to be thrown away, and breed only the round yellow ones, aka hybrids still...) and they decided to go this way, to offer gigantic, unsurpassed 'species' for credulous people. It is really that simple.

Frank Smith in this post during Covid said below: Jordan Winter is Admiral x Mt Millias. With his stunning picture. Do you know what roth cross Admiral is?



30 March at 20:18

Hello Everyone! Since it’s not likely we’ll be able to exhibit our flowers any time soon, I thought I would try to share some of the wonderful things we have in bloom this season for everyone to enjoy. This is Paphiopedilum rothschildianum ‘Jordon Winter’ FCC/AOS.

This plant is a seedling from the Paphiopedilum rothschildianum (‘Admiral’ x ‘Mont Milais’ FCC/AOS) cross I made several years ago and is currently the most vigorous roth in my collection. It is normal for this plant to produce up to 6 flowers on each inflorescence, but since it carried four seedpods this past year and was repotted a few months back the flower count is not as high as usual. I can’t wait to see what it does next year!

Happy Growing!

 

[SelectOrchids]

Admiral is (Charles E. x Borneo) x Charles E. Krull Smith has excellent roths as well...