When to warn against sellers?

[Elite Orchids]

very kind Guidal - it was because of Airplanfran that we set Elite orchids up - i bought consortipetalum, lowiis, sanderianum's, beseae flavum's from her - none of which were true to form. so i decided there may be space for a company that isn't the cheapest, but offer's plants "in flower" and in clear pots so you can see the roots - therefore the customer can be fairly confident with what they are buying.

 

[P.K.Hansen]

Elite Orchids. Sorry if anybody thought you were one of sellers mentioned.
I've so far only bought a large haynaldianum from you - which is doing great. You do have a few on your list that I consider though
But as mentioned in my last post - NOTHING bad to say about you or your business.

 

[Guldal]

Per, I didn't mean to imply, that you stated anything negative about Mark & Elite... I only thought that we should name the other culprits - or should one say culbrits?!

So far two of the three has been identified. Has the time come to out the last of your negative adventures? Or did he/she return with a satisfying reaction?

I've so far only bought a large haynaldianum from you....

I thought, you didn't do larger multiflorals?!

 

[P.K.Hansen]

I thought, you didn't do larger multiflorals?!

I (almost) don't
That haynaldianum is a rather compact plant.

 

[Elite Orchids]

Per, I didn't mean to imply, that you stated anything negative about Mark & Elite... I only thought that we should name the other culprits - or should one say culbrits?!

So far two of the three has been identified. Has the time come to out the last of your negative adventures? Or did he/she return with a satisfying reaction?



I thought, you didn't do larger multiflorals?!

no worries - no offence taken. i have a couple i could name......but it wouldn't be appropriate

 

[P.K.Hansen]

The last one on my list won't be mentioned because the plants weren't sold as a different species, but they were much smaller than promised,or have been of poor quality and died quickly after arrival. So I haven't been able to flower a single one of them yet, and therefor can't say wether they are correct labeled or not.

 

[P.K.Hansen]

I just want to share a pic of the last of my "paph. violascens" I bought from Blakessbothanical.
That makes it three out of three wrong.
No idea what it is. About 30-50% bigger than my Maudiae.

 

[Elite Orchids]

talking about the above suppliers - this is violascens i bought from him/her - as you can see - not as described - possibly a hybrid - anybody got any guesses? thanks

 

[BrucherT]

Have orchid fanciers not yet begun sending samples off for DNA sequencing? You can have it done for $10 per sample, in bulk. That would settle so many mysteries...

 

[littlefrog]

talking about the above suppliers - this is violascens i bought from him/her - as you can see - not as described - possibly a hybrid - anybody got any guesses? thanks

Paph. argus x some sort of Maudiae?

 

[littlefrog]

Have orchid fanciers not yet begun sending samples off for DNA sequencing? You can have it done for $10 per sample, in bulk. That would settle so many mysteries...

The main problem with that (I used to do genomics and high throughput sequencing...) is that while the price has come down to very good levels, you need reference material. You can't identify an unknown without something to compare it to. Even then it might not be trivial, I think a lot of our 'species' are really varieties and not as genetically distinct as you might hope. Not that this is a technical limitation (we do it with humans), but you need vast databases of samples to build a model that is reliable. We can't even do it reliably with humans yet (particularly humans who aren't of european descent), no matter what the DNA ancestry companies might say.

 

[BrucherT]

The main problem with that (I used to do genomics and high throughput sequencing...) is that while the price has come down to very good levels, you need reference material. You can't identify an unknown without something to compare it to. Even then it might not be trivial, I think a lot of our 'species' are really varieties and not as genetically distinct as you might hope. Not that this is a technical limitation (we do it with humans), but you need vast databases of samples to build a model that is reliable. We can't even do it reliably with humans yet (particularly humans who aren't of european descent), no matter what the DNA ancestry companies might say.

interesting, especially considering that we are doing exactly this with fungi, which have untold numbers of genera with a thousandfold the possible diversity of Paphiopedilum. It’s a matter of running lots of sequences and putting them online for others to run theirs against. The species concept becomes better and better defined the more specimens are run and cryptics can be identified. For an example, check out the Mycoflora Project.

 

[littlefrog]

Completely agree, we just need somebody to take the lead on it and fund it for slippers. Maybe somebody is already working on it - I've been out of the DNA business for more than a few years now. If the only reason somebody isn't doing it is because they don't have bioinformatics support... Well, I'd dust off the keyboard for that project, just let me know.