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Guldal, I realized when I took this photo that the flash altered the colour of the flower in an unusual way. The real colour is a soft, creamy yellow just a little more so than ivory with dark purple spotting. In this photo it looks rather green! I still posted it because it is close to a true species leucochilum with a totally unspotted pouch. Some leucochilums are light yellow rather than white; some suspect this may be due to hybridization that has occurred in the wild environment.Nice! Might we see it in a more natural light?
Thanks, Guldal! Here's another photo of the plant in more normal light: no flash.It's a lovely flower...natural type leuco as opposed to the linebred types (no value judgement on my behalf - I love the best from both!)
You have, no doubt, seen many plants both nursery grown and wild collected in Thailand so you may be right about the two base colours of these paphs. According to the original botanical description Paph. godefroyae applies to both forms since the holotype had a pure, unspotted pouch and was not called var. leucochilum. Today, however, we have a much wider experience of the plants than Godefroy-Lebeuf.I am thinking the spots on the pouch are not the main difference between godefroyae and leucochilum. Yes, normally godefroyae has more and bigger ones, leucochilum zero or a few small ones.
But there are two base colours, whitish and yellowish and yellowish goes for leucochilum.
Thats at least my impression from collected plants.
A problem is that we normally dont know where exactely the plants came from.
Breeding makes them nicer, but allows no clarification either.
According to the original botanical description Paph. godefroyae applies to both forms since the holotype had a pure, unspotted pouch and was not called var. leucochilum.
I have to admit I was following Phillip Cribb when I made the preceding statement; it could be he was mistaken. I have found that Guido Braem, astute as he is in many respects, is not always reliable (see his research paper with Senghas in which he proposed changing the name of Paph. callosum to P. crossii based on Morren's very incomplete and inaccurate description). As human beings, we are all fallible even the most learned. Thanks for your input, Guldal!Braem has once and for all discarded the above notion, that originates from Ph. Cribb, as utter nonsense, based on a misreading or mistranslation of Godefroy's description of the type of P. godefroyae. Braem himself, being fluent in several of the European main languages, has translated Godefroy's French original into English: "On the inside, the pouch [of P. godefroyae] is covered with nice chocolate-brown dots, on the outside with brighter spots, whereby their number diminishes near the top." (cit. after Braem et al., 'The Genus Paphiopedilum, 2nd Edition', 2016, p. 126)
In Braem's description of var. leucochillum, he reaches back and quotes Master's from 1894: "... the clear creamy white unspotted face of the labellum is a characteristic feature of this variety. The staminode and the interior of the pouch are profusely spotted with purple, but the prominent part of the lip is altogether unspotted." (cit. after ibid., p. 128). The description of this variety can't come as a surprise as the epithet 'leucochilum' is latinized greek for 'whitelipped'.
And pertaining the colour of the flowers of P godefroyae, Braem describes it as "white to pale yellow" - and I can't remember having seen any other current botanist disagree with him!
Guido Braem ... is not always reliable (see his research paper with Senghas in which he proposed changing the name of Paph. callosum to P. crossii based on Morren's very incomplete and inaccurate description).
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