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Thanks a lot Hien. Actually, I have learned a lot being on "ground 0" here.
For hiepii, there are many plants sold under that name in Viet Nam and abroad. They are simply different populations of jackii. I will post pictures.
I think that hiepii could be an abnormal plant of one of few survivors from the massive genocide of wild plants that occurs daily in Asia.
There are many, many plants collected daily all around the world. The collectors ( and the sellers) usually have no knowledge about how to treat the plants, store them, or whatever. Most of the time, they take a rice bag, go after rain (the soil is wet, so the plants can be removed easily), fill the bag with wet plants packed like crazy, soil and all. They store the bag for 1-2 days or more, and move to the major cities. With some luck the plants are unpacked at that time, sometimes they are left in the bags. Anyway, they will end up in a kind of dirt mix, where many previous plants died before. The survival rate is low, and I think many species or types disappear like that before the outer world know about them.
I have seen in Indonesia a plant that was offered by Kolopaking as "kolopakingii like with mottled leaves". The plants were definitely something different, looking a bit like huge Orchilla plants for the tesselation, but all with bacterial rot in the rhizome. I do not know of any surviving plants, except one seedling sized one in Singapore that struggle to thrive.
In Viet Nam, Hai Tam Dao (Paphiopedilum gratrixianum var. daoense) has been collected out in january, within days, and most of the plants died, the collectors did not take the roots, they cut them off. I have been lucky enough to see them in the wild, and there was a lot of variations in the plants. We will know that variety by only some plants, and according to the collectors there were a lot of variation in the flower color and shape. P.affine-like, from Nha Trang ( it was looking like the "european gratrixianum" with erect leaves heavily marked with purple dots at the base, but huge plants, with leaves up to 60 cm, erect) is extinct as well. The collectors did not store the plants properly, and wiped out 2 years ago the entire population. They wanted a high price, so only very few have been exported, those are the survivors. The bulk died. I have not yet seen a bloom from that type.
In the natural hybrids, I have seen plants of hangianum x malipoense and emersonii x malipoense, few times. The plants were in awful condition, with crazy prices of several hundreds dollars. There are many xGlanzii available, at the rate of 5-10 a month. The blooms are different from micranthum x emersonii artificial hybrid, and there is only one man to supply those. I have heard at first that it was a "new species" about 3 years ago. That man had suddenly 20 plants available. Now he is more clever, and sell the plants one by one, every couple of days. I think that there is an unknown to science colony of that natural hybrid, within 20 km from Ha Giang. The same stands true for jackii var. album, there is a quite large colony of it, several thousands plants.
Four years ago, one man in Da Lat had more than 80 wild collected delenatii album suddenly. I have seen them, and shortly thereafter, he understood that he could break the market, so he hide, and make the plants available one by one. Same for the delenatii var. vinicolor, there is one plant for sale at the same man place all the time. If someone buy it, few days later there is another one, in the 500US$ price range. I went once to get one plant, then I went the next month, he had another one. So far he is the only source for that plant, and he alawys have some available non stop for the last 7 years.
The same stands true for helenae album in Viet Nam, and esquirolei album and armeniacum album in China. I suspect that there are a lot of strange things like that that we are not aware of, colonies of with many albinos, and colonies with odd flowers. We are made aware of, as westeners, only one plant by one plant, so the market is not "broken"...
For hiepii, it could be a plant of unknown origin. I heard of 3 plants in bloom sold, in the 200-300$ range. I got some as well, unbloomed, and some have very horizontal petals... more like a jackii with horizontal petals than the original hiepii.
Most of the orchids in Viet Nam are known only from the resellers, who buy from each other like crazy, who in turn buy from any people that has plants to sell, Vietnamese, Laotian, unknown, or whatever. Therefore it is highly difficult, if not impossible, to assess properly the source of plants. The plant was not for sure a second season blooming from cultivation, are the orchid sellers here are totally unable to grow the plants. If a plant bloom in North Viet Nam in a professionnal grower place, it has to be on a wild growth that initiated the bloom in the wild. Reblooming a plant is absolutely out of question for them.
Dr. Averyanov described Dendrobium vietnamense, which is definitely a laotian plant, and I know he had a close friend in Ha Noi that he trusted completely and definitely for the source of the plants he described, and many pictures he used.
Unfortunately that friend proved to be not too reliable, and was buying the pictures and plants from many, many sources. Some pictures are even fake ones, made with collected plants put back in a forest ( not very far from Ha Noi, in Ba Vi). I discussed with a collector who was instructed to do so for 2 paph species. Nice pictures, but they do not match the plant habitat.
On the other side, there are many oddities in the plants available commercially in Viet Nam. I bought some "micranthum" leftover from the Têt, in very low bud.
Some will be micranthum, but there is an armeniacum mixed in. The flower stem and bud are armeniacum, the plant is a beautiful example of micranthum plant.
I have seen 3 times such plants, one in AnTec, one in Paphanatics, and a third one in the Orchid Zone. Micranthum plant with armeniacum flowers. I went back to discuss with the seller, the plants come from China, not Viet Nam. Actually, there are many reports of armeniacum in Viet Nam, but they come from a trade with Yunnan dealers, hangianum against armeniacum. There was apparently a population of armeniacum in Viet Nam at a time, according to a collector. There are many species in Laos, including micranthum, malipoense, and emersonii but nowhere people mention anything about that. The flowers are different, slightly to heavily. Sometimes, when the prices are right, or the mountains are out of reach ( the trail to go to see gratrixianum var. daoense fell down in october last year, I went there, and it was extremely dangerous, with a bamboo taped to the side of the mountain, at 400m above the ground), the vietnamese sellers will order a batch from Laos, or wherever. They will never acknowledge that those plants are not vietnamese, and they will build up a nice story about the vietnamese place they are coming from...
Many plants from big batches actually die before blooming. I would say that over a big box of plants, the survivors that bloom in Viet Nam are around 5-10 out of 1000 plants. Cultivation quality is very, very poor, so the fact that the plants die after bloom as Averyanov mentions does not make completely impossible that a complete colony has been wiped out and only few crappy plants could survive and bloom. It is impossible to tell for sure at present time, and it is even impossible to tell if those plants are from Viet Nam, or an accidental trade with a native from Laos, China or wherever.
I will say something else. There are some species that have never, ever, been seen really in the wild by foreigners or scientists. This include Viet Nam. As an example, there is absolutely, totally, and definitely NO Dendrobium trantuanii anywhere in Viet Nam. I discussed with the "discoverer", and he told me he bought plants from the minorities close to the Laos border. I tried to find out if there are any in Viet Nam, and the minorities explained to me that those plants actually were coming from a vietnamese whose second wife is Laotian. He cross the border by motorbike to a small village, 200 km from the Viet Nam border, where there is a huge market of wild collected plants.
Many Thai growers go to this market every month or every other month.
Some Chineses are there as well, and Burmese are known to bring some bags here and there. They exchange a lot of plants from their own home countries.
Therefore it is IMPOSSIBLE to know if plants coming from this market are Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese or Laotian. They buy and sell like crazy. That's where dendrobium vietnamense appeared, and I happened to found plants close to the lao/burma/china border. Nothing to do with Viet Nam at any cost!
One one more note, I have been very surprised and sad to learn today that paphiopedilum coccineum is nearly extinct. It was a popular plant for pot plant, but is easily prone to bacterial rot after collection ( they pack the plants in big bags, wet, and the leaves are frequently heavily broken). Suddenly the plants are unavailable, the minorities said there were still plenty, but in fact they turn out to be henryanums...