Ramon and all others,
Your plant/flower brings up all kinds of feelings in me. This maybe another case of "muddying up" the species gene pool. We have had other threads on this topic, delenatii (normal colored form vs. vinicolors), hookerae vs. volonteanum, hirsutis. vs. esquirolei and of course the Cochlos. It bugs me that breeders make these crosses between closely related species and you end up with this jumbled mess with lost tags, poor record keeping or whatever. Then some Taxo dude comes along and says"this is all one species". "Can't you see, this is normal variation within the group". When this "intermediate" group of plants have traits of both parent species is nothing more then a hybridizer mess. I'm not saying all people who hybridize are unprofessional about their work but it starts there by making these crosses. The whole seller that buys can add to the problem with bad records and/or lost tags. Then the retailer can compound the issue with more of the same. There is one local retailer I'll never buy from again. Too many times they have Paphs with clearly "miss labelled" tags in the pots.
Let me tell you all a story about two plants that look exactly like Ramon's pictured here,flowers and growths. A friend of mine took a trip back in the mid to late 90's to Calif. He hooked up with a number of Paph folks out that way and they toured a lot of different orchid firms. Anyway, he got back to Houston with two Paphs and they where labelled "Paph victoria regina", both in spike. I suggested we cross the two and make the next generation. When they flowered, we were both shooked to see this unusaul combination. At the same time there was a disscusion going a round in the Paph world over the true naming of victoria regina vs. chamberlainianum. So with this plant in my hand, I thought this is it! Because we both had plants labelled chamberlainianum and they looked nothing like these plants! Chamberlainianums were huge, stiff leaved, green plants with totally different flowers and bloom habits. Our plants labelled victoria regina were smaller, blue-green with a thin maroon color to the edge of the leaves and different flower/ bloom habit. I thought I knew something that the experts missed! That chamber and victora were two different plants and not merely the same plant with two names.
Well to make this long story longer! I grew out the cross we had made and sold compots to people labelled as "Paph victoria regina". It was a mistake! I came to find out later at one of our shows these two plants were fakes. I pointed the plant out to a long time friend, Norito Hasegawa. He told me the plant was a cross that Terry Root had make between moquettieanum and glaucophyllum and that the plants were misslabelled.
Now you can see why I have problems with these same "close species crosses. It started from the hybridization and I compounded the problem
My plant may indeed turnout to be one of these "hybrid" species coming back to haunt me!:sob:
Don't be up set. The bottom line is I like the plant and I keeping it.
Ramon
