I do have that edition of Orchid Digest but not handy. I'll ask if my wife can dig it up.
I had cut and paste the passage below into a document that I keep on published S E Asian Paphs.
Koopowitz in Tropical Slipper Orchids tends to agree with Christenson but I'm aware that others consider affine/gratrixianum to be forms/varieties of villosum.
Regards, Mick
Christenson, Eric A. "The Rediscovery of Paphiopedilum Gratrixianum." Orchid Digest 68, no. 3 (Jul/Sep 2004): 146-147.: "The plants that have been called P. gratrixianum consistently in botany (Seidenfaden, 1992) and in horticulture (Gruss, 1994) are correctly P. affine described by DeWildemann in 1906 based on plants thought to have come from Tonkin in Vietnam. In addition to having quite different leaf proportions, these two species differ in their overall stature and pigmentation of the leaves. In P. gratrixianum the inflorescences are about half the length of the distinctively long scapes of P. affine, a feature which is conspicuously dominant in the hybrids of the latter. While both species have purple markings on the undersides of the leaves toward the base, the patterns are different. In P. gratrixianum the purple markings are distributed in a dense field of uniform marbling. Paphiopedilum affine, in contrast, has a less dense, nonuniform field of pigment that is punctuated by conspicuous bold spots, spots which are totally absent from P. gratrixianum."
The wide leaf plants are clearly the gratrixianum.
The narrow leafed plants are extinct for a while, they came from Nha Trang, I was the last one to get plants about 3 years, they are different from those wide leafed gratrixianum, but clearly a kind of variation anyway. The wild plants are quite variable, from spotted dorsal to spotted/flushed to only flushed dorsal. I think that anyway gratrixianum and villosum breeds very frequently in the wild.
Well, obviously he did not speak french, because the affine description clearly applies to a mottled leaf paph. The narrow leafed gratrixianum types have as well very dark and dense spotting, and some gratrixianum (from Tam Dao) have nearly no spots at their base, just a hint of pink flush...
I am trying to understand the differences between affine and gratrixianum. I found the original description of affine printed in La Tribune Horticole ca. 1906. Would someone be so kind as to translate???
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