Friday, February 29, 2008

Random plant event: Bak. Truth 'Silver Chalice' flowers



According to one site out there, this is a cross of "Alcra. Kahola Mountains" and "Odm Lenestro," which is kind of opaque to me, but maybe it makes sense to you. I, going by the lessons of the recent post on Lc. Tropical Pointer 'Cheetah,'1 went looking for information on this one, but I couldn't come up with an interpretation for "Bak.," and I'm easily frustrated when my google-fu is weak.

I did spot an annotation "AM/AOS," the second part of which I'm assuming is "American Orchid Society," but if "AM" refers to a medal given to this cross, I'm confused again. Do they give Aluminum Medals to orchids? 'Cause that would be weird.

But anyway. We don't really need to understand the flower's whole genealogy to be able to appreciate it.

Much as I like some of these orchid flowers, I still say I'm not going to start collecting. I'd need a whole lot more room, and patience, and emotional resilience, and money, than what I actually have. If I decide to go crazy for a particular flowering plant, it's going to be Hoyas or Anthuriums or something like that. (One could argue that I've already gone crazy for Anthuriums, actually.) But they can be quite magnificent, something I maybe didn't appreciate before now because the only ones I ever saw were Phalaenopsis.

Not that there's anything wrong with Phalaenopsis.

-


1 'Cheetah,' by the way, sold sometime in the last couple days. The boss was talking about maybe taking it herself, though I bet she didn't, and a customer actually bought it.


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Enabler warning: Phalaenopsis aren't any harder to care for than most other houseplants, you just have to deal with the odd potting media and watering requirements. They do like a lot of warmth, so they do well in my grow room, which stays toasty from all those lights.

But you probably should stay away from orchids - you sound like you are borderline overwhelmed with your existing plant collection - and spring at the garden center will be BUSY!

Tracy said...

I try to admire orchids from afar, they have addiction written all over them. I have one that I just bought, hopefully that will soothe my desire for these plants. Plant addictions are so hard to fight off, I mean they are plants......it's not like I am smoking crack, but they can take over your life kind of like crack can.....lol.

mr_subjunctive said...

sheila:

"Will be?" It's already all going faster than I can keep up with. I'm doing a reasonably good job of not letting this get to me, though; I just keep telling myself that next year will be better than this, and most of what needs to get done this year probably will in some fashion or another, so it'll all be fine. Amazingly, so far, I believe me.

And yeah, I've heard that about Phalaenopsis before, and I've seen some that were pretty cool looking (actually there's one pretty cool one in the background of the 'Silver Chalice' picture), but I've seen enough of them by now that I'm mostly just kinda ennh on them. 'Cheetah' and 'Silver Chalice' got my attention mostly by being different from the phals.

tracy:

Oh god yes. I mean, I'm still hoping that I'll be able to get some of the excess moved out of here soonish, and I'll have a more reasonably-sized collection, but it's not like that's going to help, 'cause I know I'll just wind up getting more. WCW's plant addiction stays more or less under control because she gives them away (either donation to work, or to her co-workers at another job) when she gets tired of them. I expect I'm going to have to take a similar attitude toward mine soon.

Anonymous said...

mr s, I must admit that if I worked at a place with all the cool plants you have, I'd have a much bigger collection myself!

Yeah, the phals do get kind of ho-hum after a while, but I like flowers in the winter. They cheer me up. Except for African violets, which bore me (I used to grow them, overdid it and got sick of them), phals are the only lower light flowering plant. Plus they do really, really well under grow lights.

Anonymous said...

A lot of orchids do really well under grow lights. And for unique flowers, they're hard to beat.

:D

Anonymous said...

Couldn't "AM" just stand for "Award of Merit"?

My 2 cts.

Btw, here's the Lloyd quotation I had lost in my library:

"Gardening, like living, should be fun. It can't be much of the time, but we can do our best to make it so. It is that intangible something which immediately proclaims that behind the scenes there is an original whose guiding hand has created something ephemeral; ephemeral, yes, but with the magic of a sunset."

Mr GG

Anonymous said...

Couldn't "AM" just stand for "Award of Merit"?

My 2 cts.

Btw, here's the Lloyd quotation I had lost in my library:

"Gardening, like living, should be fun. It can't be much of the time, but we can do our best to make it so. It is that intangible something which immediately proclaims that behind the scenes there is an original whose guiding hand has created something ephemeral; ephemeral, yes, but with the magic of a sunset."

Mr GG

Unknown said...

Could this be Bakerara?

There's a list of orchid "genera" abbreviations here(including the integeneric ones, whatever the word for that is).

That list says it is Brassia x Miltonium x Odontocidium x Oncidium

Unknown said...

And Alcra is Aliceara :-)