Ascocendas are crosses between Ascocentrum and Vanda. You can see the Vanda parentage pretty easily in the shape and size of the flowers; I can't quite figure out what the Ascocentrums are contributing. (Do a Google image search, if you're not already familiar with Ascocentrum.)
The tag ("Ascda. Raminda Gold x Ascda. Fortune East") was wrong on this plant; about 40-50% of the plants at the Illowa Orchid Show (Wallace's Garden Center hosts the show, but it's the Illowa Orchid Society's deal.) are mis-tagged in some way or another. "Raminda" should be "Ram Indra" or "Ramindra." Both the one- and two-word versions are common enough on the net that I don't know which is officially correct.
I like the flower, though. I mean, I tend to think Vandas are pretty anyway, but the patterning on this one is interesting. The Ascocendas to come (December and March) aren't nearly this neat, and photographed even less well than this besides.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Pretty picture: Ascocenda Ram Indra Gold x Ascda. Fortune East
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4 comments:
When ascocendas were first developed, the idea was to create a small plant with large flowers. Ascocentrums are quite tiny and have a great many small flowers on their spike, Vandas are generally huge and the species in cultivation have quite large flowers. The hybrids also introduced true red to the vanda lifestyle.
The first successful ascocendas (like the ever-popular Yip Sum Wah) met that goal. Unfortunately the hybridizers have continued to cross these hybrids with vandas, and thus created quite large-growing plants in the process. So modern ascocenda hybrids are not necessarily smaller than the vandas they were intended to miniaturize.
Very pretty flower.
The right name is Ram Indra Gold. You can find oud the registered name on the International Orchid Register website: http://apps.rhs.org.uk/horticulturaldatabase/orchidregister/orchiddetails.asp?ID=44629
To add on to Nycguy, Ascocentrums also added bright yellows & oranges as well as fuller/rounder petals with a flatter (all in the same plane) presentation.
I grew up near this Ram Indra road! It's quite a well-known road in Bangkok (assuming it's Thai in origin). I remember the sign spelled it as Ram Inthra so I'm not sure why it's registered that way...
Big fan of your blog, by the way!
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