Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum mastersianum

I like the whole pretend-daisy (or Gerbera, Gazania, or whatever it's trying to do) thing, though I feel like it could be trying a little harder to do a full circle of flowers. Only the insects without any standards are going to bother with 75% of a flower. Have some self-respect, Bulbophyllum mastersianum.

I'm kidding, of course.

No insects have standards.

There was a Bulbophyllum mastersianum in 2014 as well, which is possibly even the same specimen. I mean, the 2016 one was bigger, but of course the 2016 one would be bigger than it was in 2014. So maybe.

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum lobbii

I responded to some of the comments people left on the previous post, but if you don't feel like checking on them:

The U.S. has not devolved into a Mad Max-style wasteland full of people shooting at one another, as it appeared might be the case following Dallas. So we have that going for us, at least, and I'm genuinely a little surprised. I remain really anxious about next week's Republican National Convention -- it would be difficult to create a more powder-keggy situation on purpose -- but maybe that, too, will pass without the country falling to pieces. Maybe there will even be no bloodshed. We can hope, at least. 2016 really should throw us a break sooner or later.

And as far as taking comfort from nature goes, of course that's a good thing. Election years are always¹ hard on me, but this year has been especially bad. It's much easier for things like Orlando / Philando Castile / Alton Sterling / Dallas to knock me off balance if there's also an election happening. And things get even worse if I start making weird assumptions like "calm" = "unconcerned," as I was kind of doing in that last post. So if looking at pictures of orchids is part of how you manage to stay functional, I apologize for making it more difficult to do that.

At the moment, I would really like to find something to do, but either don't have the resources or the temperament or both for most of the Black-Lives-Matter-related things I can think of, and to be honest I'm probably not in the right frame of mind to be useful at the moment even if presented with something useful to do.²

But we have an orchid, at least. And it's a pretty nice one, even. Bulbophyllum lobbii is apparently another really variable orchid species; the previously-seen B. lobbii specimens haven't looked much like this at all:

Bulbophyllum lobbii 'Kathy's Gold' (2013)

Bulbophyllum lobbii 'Sonoma Gold' (2015)

I suppose the other possibility is that some of these are misidentified, but on-line image searches show a lot of different-looking plants. I'm assuming it's probably just that variable.³ This year's plant is easily the prettiest of the three. Lucky for us.

In other news, I can now report that all five Amorphophallus are alive and working on leaves (or maybe blooms, but I'm assuming leaves):

It's still ridiculously late for this to be happening, and some of the leaf buds are still so short you can barely see them in the picture, but everybody's accounted for, and at least I don't have to worry that they've rotted. Hopefully they'll have time for photosynthesis before fall arrives.

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¹ (For values of "always" greater than or equal to 1998.)
I paid attention to elections, and cared who won, prior to 1998, but it became personal in '98 because that was the year that all politicians of both parties ran against Ellen DeGeneres, and I was pretty newly out to people myself, and it was really, really tough to hear some of the things people were saying about LGBT Americans.
2004 and 2010 were also unusually difficult -- '04 because that was the year of "maybe we need a Constitutional Amendment to prevent the gays from getting married," and '10 because that was the year when Iowa's elections were partly focused on recalling the judges who had ruled in favor of gay marriage in 2009. So every six years, I guess, is an especially bad election for me, but none of them are ever actually good. And none of the especially bad ones were competitive with 1998 until this year.
² But e-mail or comment anyway, if you hear of something.
³ Like Rhynchostylis gigantea, it has a pretty large natural habitat -- Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines -- which probably explains a lot of the variation. It's also possible that they look different depending on growing conditions; I believe the 2015 and 2016 specimens were entered in the show by different exhibitors, based on how they were tagged and displayed.

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann 'Buckleberry'

We just did a Bulbophyllum, I know, but this one looks so different I feel like it shouldn't count as a repeat.

Bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann 'Buckleberry' = Bulbophyllum longissimum x Bulbophyllum rothschildianum (Ref.)

To put it in misleadingly oversimplified terms, it looks sort of like B. longissimum is long but light-colored, and B. rothschildianum is stumpy but colorful, and Elizabeth Ann 'Buckleberry' got the length from one parent and the color from the other.

When I looked into the ancestry, I was surprised to learn that B. putidum (previously, in 2014) wasn't in the mix somewhere, because they seem pretty similar in color. Apparently not, though. It did get me wondering how often orchid breeders wind up making hybrids that more or less duplicate a natural species. Surely that's happened at least once, right?

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum lobbii 'Sonoma Gold'

This one is much nicer than the previous Bulbophyllum lobbii (2013, 'Kathy's Gold'); I was particularly surprised at the size of the flowers.

I mean, the flowers weren't quite large enough to stretch across my hand, but it was close. I don't think I've ever seen a Bulbophyllum that big before.

Of course, the plant was pretty substantial, too. Maybe 'Sonoma Gold' is just an all-around giant?

Unpretty pictures: Bulbophyllum oxypterum

Sometimes when I title a post "unpretty pictures," it's a little tongue-in-cheek, and the pictures aren't actually that bad. This is not one of those times, though.

I mean, not that it isn't still interesting. B. pterophyllum is actually sort of fascinating. But pretty it isn't.

It would be a very long project to try to determine whether this is the single strangest orchid I've ever seen, but it's surely a contender, at least. Sort of like an Epiphyllum, but somehow even uglier. At least Epiphyllum have nice flowers.

Sure, I've grown and enjoyed plants whose appeal wasn't immediately obvious, but damn.

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum mastersianum

Well, this is different.

Definitely prettier than previous Bulbophyllums have been. (I suppose one could argue that B. echinolabium is prettier, though I think I prefer B. mastersianum.)

Not sure if it means anything, but I saw more Bulbophyllums at the 2015 orchid show than ever before (three, compared to a mere five total over the previous five years) -- are they having a moment? Did the genus just become cool or something?

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum putidum

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum lobbii 'Kathy's Gold' AM/AOS

The leaves are more interesting than the flower, n'est-ce pas?

Pretty picture: Bulbophyllum echinolabium

Best Bulbophyllum so far. Not that there's a lot of competition. (There's competition insofar as some really pretty Bulbophyllums exist in the world; there's not much competition in that this is only the second one I've posted to PATSP. You're going to have to wait until August to see a third. And spoiler alert: it's not as pretty as this.)

Pretty (?) pictures: Bulbophyllum saurocephalum