Now it is ready and pleases me with its bloom. Popow and Gruß both publish similar plants as manzurii, American reviewers seem to see it differently, actually I don't care, but I'd be interested to hear what
@ORG has to say about it.
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All;
We are asking the wrong questions. The question is not what American vs. German authors see in a particular flower, or what the subjective opinion is of one commercial dealer, an opinion that will always be on the side of selling more plants. The question is do the natural populations throughout Colombia and northern Ecuador support the existence of separate species other than
schlimii. The answer is no, and the article in support of that was published in Die Orchidee in German. I encourage all of our friends in Germany to read the articles.
Second, natural populations do support maintenance of the name
manzurii as a
fma of
schlimii, the correct name being
Phragmipedium schlimii fnma manzurii. The red in the staminode of this flower precludes it from being
manzurii. It simply does not match the description. And this is the problem with the static nature of the eight (8) names applied to plants of
schlimii. So few actually match the description with f
ischeri being based on a malformed flower that doesn't exist in any natural population.
Why?
Because only ~ 25% of the plants found at the original location, the type location of
manzurii, actually met the description as published. The rest of the plants all had variable combinations of variable attributes that excluded them from being classified as
manzurii. If a flower/plant does not conform to the description, it cannot be what was described, as much as we might want it to be. This is why you see so many flowers labelled as manzurii here and on social media that are not even close to the description.
Best,
Frank