Paph. fairieanum ssp ? or X ??

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Carsten, look carefully at the line drawing of nigrescens from March 1975. You will see on the side view the dorsal clearly reflexes forward. Nigrescens is not your typical run-of-the-mill fairrieanum. Bernd's flower fits well within the above description of 1978 publication.
When I loaded the whole article above I was able to click on the individual pages to maginify enough to read but from work I'm not able to. I'll have to read the article from home and see if it goes into detail for nigrescens to shed more light on the topic.

Rick, I agree with you that the nigrescens is not a typical fairrieanum. It has a very untypical colour, but that's (for me) the only difference. The dorsal looks relatively small from the drawing, and yes, it reflexes forward, including the typical fairrieanum waves in the upper third. It does show the small bract too. The petals recurve backwards. The colour of the dorsal and the pouch were described as "dark wine-red", whilst the petals were "dark reddish-purple".
Bernds flower has not just one but a few peculiar features for a fairrie and I'm not convinced yet that it is straight fairrie.

Bernd, who was the vendor who sold you this plant? Have you tried to contact him?
 
If this is a hybrid there is an easy way to test: self it. A hybrid would produce a large range of phenotypes. If this is a real fairieanum we should see only minor variation among the offspring. I see little reason to doubt the authenticity of the label without better evidence than "it looks different to what I'm used to."
 
I think it is the real deal. Yes, I would self it too. If it is a red vini-color x fairrieanum hybrid, if you self it, it will probably be sterile. These hybrids rarely breed. If it is a true fairrieanum, you will more than likely get viable seed if you self it.

Robert
 
It certainly looks like a pure fairieanum to me....just a very extreme colour form.

The plain green leaves indicate virtually zero barbata-type influence. Yes, self it. That will provide more of this spectacular plant to the hobby as well as definitively answer the question: Hybrid or not?
 
Very intriguing plant. I'd love to see pictures of the parents not just to prove the debate of hybrid or species, but to see how much darker it is than them. It would be interesting to see if the form was the same as well. I'm interested as to why it doesn't recurve like the usual fairieanum.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top