Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum armeniacum

Another case where backlighting wasn't helpful.



I'm also confused a bit by this one, because this is the second P. armeniacum photo I have from this show. (The first.) Ordinarily, if I had multiple pictures of the same species, I would put them into a single post. The pictures are obviously not of the same individual flower, and the lighting suggests that maybe it was from a different plant entirely, but it's weird to think that I could have taken photos of two different Paphiopedilum armeniacums at the same show, brought the photos home, sorted through them, edited them, and scheduled them without ever noticing that they were of the same species.

They were even both tagged correctly, so I can't use that as an excuse. What was I thinking?

Not that it matters a lot either way. I just think it's weird.

This is also the last of the pictures from the 2012 orchid show, if anybody but me is keeping track of that.

What should you expect from the 2013 batch? Well, I didn't get as many, so they'll be further apart (every six or seven days, instead of four or five), and they're a little less unusual: mostly Cattleya-type stuff and slippers. This is not my fault. The show in general was pretty light on oddball orchids, compared to previous years. (I only saw one Masdevallia, and it was in a spot I couldn't photograph easily. There was only one Miltoniopsis, and it was a repeat.)

Some of them were nevertheless very pretty, and there's a weird Dendrobium coming up on April 10 that I expect everybody will like, but I was hoping for a weirder show than I got. On the other hand, their spelling and ID-ing has improved. So there's that.

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: Dendrobium Nopporn Green Star

Not really green so much as a kind of dirty yellow, but I suppose "Nopporn Dirty Yellow Star" isn't as marketable. It helps, in the horticultural world, not to be too hung up on color names matching the actual colors. (see: "blue" petunias, "black" tulips, "red" Phalaenopsis, etc.)


The backlighting and black/white background were unfortunate. The people presenting their orchids are obviously not thinking about what it's like to try to photograph them. This isn't even as bad as it gets -- the worst background by miles and miles is the parallel sticks one, which was back again for the 2013 show. I nearly cried when I saw it.¹ This black-and-white one was also back. It's not that it's so terrible, it's just that it breaks up the outlines of the plants and confuses the camera and just generally makes it harder to see the actual plant. It's not, like, Hitler bad, but it's irritating. I wish they'd all just invest in some plain black foam board.


Backlighting should be less of a problem for the 2013 set, at least, since we had a nice overcast day for once. My camera gets confused by partly cloudy days -- it adjusts itself for sun, then the sun goes behind a cloud as I press the button and I wind up with a picture that's overly blue, or vice-versa and I get pictures that are too yellow. For 2013, though, I used the cloudy setting throughout, and mostly got nice pictures as a result. So there's that.

Anyway. Dendrobium Nopporn Green Star is a cross of Dendrobium Burana Jade (seed) x Dendrobium Srimahapote (pollen).

-

¹ (exaggeration for comic effect)

Pretty pictures: Paphiopedilum Wossner Kolosuk

Oh, Paphiopedilums, how you torment me. I've whined about this plenty of times before, so I don't think I need to go into details: you can read the whining here if you want. (Or here. Or here.)



tag: Paphiopedilum Wossner Kolosuk
previously featured: (2010)

Pretty pictures: Masdevallia Prince Charming

Good old reliable Masdevallia 'Prince Charming.' Long may he wave.









Previous PATSP posts about Masdevallia 'Prince Charming:' 2010

tag: Masdevallia Prince Charming
origin: Masd. angulata x Masd. veitchiana

Pretty picture: Cattlianthe Trick or Treat

Tag: Ctt. Trick or Treat

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Susan Tucker

Tag: PAPH. SUSAN TUCKER (SHALIMAR X F. C. PUDDLE)

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis Taida King's Caroline 'Little Zebra'

Tag: PHAL. TAIDA KING'S CAROLINE 'LITTLE ZEBRA' AM/AOS

Pretty picture: Odontonia Yellow Parade

Tag: Odtna. Yellow Para[rubbed off of tag]e

Pretty picture: Phragmipedium Sorcerer's Apprentice

Tag: Phrag. Sorcerer's Apprentice

Pretty picture: Oncidium Twinkle 'Sun Light'

Tag: ONC. TWINKLE 'SUN LIGHT' (cheirophorum x sotoanum)

Pretty pictures: Dendrobium lawesii

Tag: Den. lawesii

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Jogjae 'York'

Tag: Paphiopedilum Jogjae 'York'

Origin: Paph. glaucophyllum and Paph. praestans

Pretty pictures: Epidendrum stamfordianum

Tag: Epi stamfordianum

Pretty picture: Cattleya alliance NOID

Tag: none

wrong tags: 9
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 15

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Prim-N-Proper

Tag: Paph. Prim-N-Proper (is correct)

Origin: Paphiopedilum praestans x Paphiopedilum primulinum

Pretty picture: Oncidium Space Race 'Coco'

I'm kinda meh about these flowers, but I find the unopened bud in the top left corner kind of interesting.

Space Race is a hybrid of Onc. Sphacetante and Onc. Pupukea Sunset. The former tongue-twisty name is a clumsy mashup of its parents' names, Oncidium sphacelatum and Oncidium Debutante (I would have recommended "Debutatum," if anybody had asked me, but of course nobody ever does.), and I didn't care to track down the ancestry of Debutante, so that is left as an exercise for the reader. Pupukea Sunset is a hybrid of the two species Oncidium fuscatum and Oncidium cheirophorum.

Space Race most strongly resembles O. sphacelatum, which is also yellow with some brown or red-brown spots. I much prefer the looks of O. fuscatum (brown, with a large pink and white labellum) or O. cheirophorum (solid bright yellow), but that's just me.

Pretty pictures: Vanda Wirat Blue

I couldn't find anything about Wirat Blue at the International Orchid Register, which makes me question if it's a real name or not.


There's a Vanda Wirat, for example, and if you do a Google search for Vanda Wirat, you get a lot of hits for both Wirat Blue and Wirat Pink, neither of which are in the IOR. Could it be that the Wirat cross produced offspring which were blue (or at least "blue," the aspirational name given to certain shades of purple in the horticultural world) and other seedlings which were pink? Or is it more complicated than that? I don't know.


I suppose the important thing is that Vandas are pretty.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum NOID

So. Much. White.


No tag, so:

wrong tags: 9
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 14

Imidacloprid has now been added to all the plants in the basement, so the only thing left to do is wait and see if more scale show up. I bought two more pounds of imidacloprid last Wednesday: one pound I opened but only used a tiny bit of, and the other I didn't open at all and could probably return to the store. The question now is whether to be an optimist and return the latter, or be a pessimist and use the nearly two remaining pounds to dose some more plants (maybe everything in the plant room?), on the off chance that that might make anything better.

Actually it's not that much of a question. We already know I'm a pessimist.

Not that I'm telling the plant collection what to do or anything, but remember how last summer when everything was horrible, and then the Epiphyllum and Clivia both bloomed and I was all like okay, I guess I can't stay mad at you, and things got better for a while? This would be a really excellent time for the Eucharis to decide to grow a flower. I'd even accept one of the Begonias, or Aechmea fasciatas. In my wildest dreams, maybe the Brassolaeliocattleya (still, inexplicably, alive) or Selenocereus chrysocardium. I do feel like the collection owes me something for all this.

Pretty (?) pictures: Schoenorchis paniculata

Well, I suppose it's different, at least.




No, the scale situation has not improved. I have so far (as of last night) dumped approximately 2 pounds of imidacloprid granules into about 500 plants' pots. The idea is to do everything in the basement, and leave the scale nowhere to run. This is tedious, exhausting, depressing, and very possibly unhealthy, but it will be worth it if it gets rid of the scale.

If it doesn't, well. Let's just say you wouldn't want to be here when I discover the survivors.