Pretty picture: Dendrobium Spring Bird

I have disliked orchids before, for various reasons. Sometimes the flowers are fine but just didn't photograph well; sometimes they don't do anything for me personally, but I can see why they might appeal to other people, so I just chalk it up to "not my thing" and move on. With this one, though, for reasons which aren't entirely clear to me, I just hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

In this particular case, it didn't photograph especially well either, but I looked at other pictures of the same grex elsewhere on the internet and concluded that the photos were more or less accurate. It really is kind of a muddy and washed-out light orangey pinky yellow. *shrug*

I couldn't find photos of either parent on-line, though I'd be willing to bet that both are prettier than this.

Dendrobium Spring Bird = Dendrobium Demitasse x Dendrobium Sweet Love (Ref.)

Pretty picture: Maxillariella Maui Coconut

At some point, a new genus, Maxiarella, was split off from the genus Maxillaria. And I would just like to take a moment to boo and jeer and make rude gestures at the taxonomists who thought it would be a good idea to split one genus into two that are practically anagrams of one another.¹ I'm sure you had your reasons, guys, but nobody's ever going to be able to keep those straight. If you're not going to try to make the words recognizably different, maybe just leave them in the same genus, okay? It's not like anyone will know.

And then you get the intergeneric hybrid of the two, which is Maxillariella, also very easily confused for both of the parent genera. I mean Jesus Christ, taxonomists. Is the thrill completely gone from changing the names around every five minutes, that now you have to invent new ways to upset and confuse everybody?

[noise of irritation and disgust]

Anyway. Name aside, I don't have any particularly strong feelings about this one. We've seen previous Maxi[mumble]a species in 2015 (M. cucullata), 2012, and 2014 (both M. tenuifolia) The foliage on Maui Coconut is more interesting than usual, I suppose, but the flowers are small and unshowy.

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to have a fragrance, and my notes say that I might have gotten a whiff of something coconuty at the show but I wasn't sure about that.

I'm also not actually that big a fan of the smell of coconut, so even if I were certain about the fragrance, it wouldn't improve my opinion of the hybrid much.

Maxillariella Maui Coconut = Maxillariella sanguinea x Maxillariella tenuifolia (Ref.)

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¹ Not quite actual anagrams, but about as close as a pair of non-anagrams could get; they differ by one letter. Both start with "Maxi," both end in "a," both contain a double-L and an "ar," but they remain one letter apart. (maxiarElla; maxillarIa)