Aerides odorata

[naoki]

I purchased it as Aerides krabiense from Ooi Leng Sun in May 2015. The photos were taken about a month ago, but this is the first bloom. I think it is A. odorata. They don't even look similar, and it is hard to comprehend how they mislabeled this. But it is a nice species with wonderful fragrance, and it fills the entire room.

The roots were tangled up, so I couldn't get it out for the photo shoot at that time. But now, I repotted most plants in this grow tent (it was tough to get them out of there). It is getting rather too large for growing under light.

 

[abax]

*loooong sniff*. lovely flowers.

 

[DrLeslieEe]

Naoki, it is definitely not Aerides krabiensis, which is pink and has a flat disc lip.

Your proposed ID of Aerides odorata is most likely the correct one. Mind you, its quite a pretty color version with contrasting yellow lip mentum/tail.

 

[naoki]

I just learned that a similar species was described in 2019 from Palawan. It is Aerides cootesii, and here is the link to the original description. I was learning about this new species to confirm that mine is not A. cootesii, but I realized I didn't have enough photos to see the column morphology. But I think the difference in the midlobe of the lip can be seen here. A. cootesii has a larger lip, which is covering up the anther cap (blue), and the margin is more jagged. Also the spur is longer with A. odorata than with A. cootesii (red). This is kind of subtle, but you can see it in the distance between the nipple-like things at the bottom/back-side of the spur to the tip of the spur. So I think mine is A. odorata. If you have A. odorata from Philippines, you might want to check it. Color scheme seems to be different, but it wasn't mentioned as the difference, and due to the wide geographic distribution of A. odorata, there are some color variation within the species.

A. cootesii (from the original paper):


A. odorata (my plant)