Leo Schordje
wilted blossom
Some of you may remember Dr. Floyd Swink, famous in Prairie Restoration & Bird Watching circles and he was a resident botanist emeritus at the Morton Arboretum just west of Chicago. He & Chuck Sheviak developed a numeric index for rating the importance of a site for preservation or restoration. By doing a species survey and asigning positive or negative numbers to species observed one could rate the quality of the species diversity at a site. The score is then used in land management decisions. A staple of state DNR managers to this day. Floyd Swink and Bob Betz and a few others were the ones to plan and plant the prairie restoration at Fermi Particle Accelerator Lab in Batavia, IL. Floyd was a nice guy, and he always made time to talk to anyone he met while walking, especially as he walked in Morton Arboretum.
The cross (concolor x yapianum) was made by Tom Franczak. He registered it the year that Dr. Swink passed away. The RHS does not recognize yapianum, so the RHS version of the registration is with the synonym (concolor x x jogjae). Now the history of both x jogjae and x yapianum is that they are naturally reproducing hybrids, collected from the wild, whose origin is from the man made hybrid that escaped and naturalized. Both are believed to be (praestans x glaucophyllum). In the case of x yapianum, seed from a selfing of (praestans x glaucophyllum) escaped from a garden on Yap Island, though the possibility exists that it may have been deliberately planted in the jungle by a certain 1970s era orchid collector in an effort to have a new species discovered and named for himself. Regardless, it is clear that x yapianum is a hybrid of two species that do not co-exist in nature, and neither one of them is indigenous to Yap Island. Therefore x yapianum must be a hybrid that originated in captivity or with captive parent plants. I don't know if there has been any follow up to see if the escaped population is spreading, or if it is declining or has disappeared. Anyone up for MaiTais and Daquiri's on the beach of Yap Island? We could call it a research expedition. Tax Deductable! (if you write an article afterwards)
I have 2 clones of the cross, this is the '2nd Best' - flowers are smallish, only 8 cm n.s. and segments are not very wide, but it is a pretty flower with nice soft brushed colors. It is 2 growths in a 4 inch pot. It always has 3 or 4 flowers sequentially on a flowering stem. Makes for a nice long flowering season.
A note for Dot, thanks for all the photo tips; the first picture I took using a Nikon S210 point and shoot, manually setting the white balance at ISO 100 on a tripod, lighting is 2 compact flouorescents & one incandescent bulbs in various spots around the room behind the camera or left of subject. Colors are fairly true - this is the most realistic of the 2 photos
This is with flash, ISO 100 on a tripod, same Nikon S210 - here the colors ore bluer than life, and the reds are too bright. But this picture looks more "Sales Catalog Flashy". buyers beware. :evil:
All in all, the problem I was having with grainy pictures seems to have disappeared once I forced the camera to a fixed ISO instead of letting the camera choose the ISO setting.
The cross (concolor x yapianum) was made by Tom Franczak. He registered it the year that Dr. Swink passed away. The RHS does not recognize yapianum, so the RHS version of the registration is with the synonym (concolor x x jogjae). Now the history of both x jogjae and x yapianum is that they are naturally reproducing hybrids, collected from the wild, whose origin is from the man made hybrid that escaped and naturalized. Both are believed to be (praestans x glaucophyllum). In the case of x yapianum, seed from a selfing of (praestans x glaucophyllum) escaped from a garden on Yap Island, though the possibility exists that it may have been deliberately planted in the jungle by a certain 1970s era orchid collector in an effort to have a new species discovered and named for himself. Regardless, it is clear that x yapianum is a hybrid of two species that do not co-exist in nature, and neither one of them is indigenous to Yap Island. Therefore x yapianum must be a hybrid that originated in captivity or with captive parent plants. I don't know if there has been any follow up to see if the escaped population is spreading, or if it is declining or has disappeared. Anyone up for MaiTais and Daquiri's on the beach of Yap Island? We could call it a research expedition. Tax Deductable! (if you write an article afterwards)
I have 2 clones of the cross, this is the '2nd Best' - flowers are smallish, only 8 cm n.s. and segments are not very wide, but it is a pretty flower with nice soft brushed colors. It is 2 growths in a 4 inch pot. It always has 3 or 4 flowers sequentially on a flowering stem. Makes for a nice long flowering season.
A note for Dot, thanks for all the photo tips; the first picture I took using a Nikon S210 point and shoot, manually setting the white balance at ISO 100 on a tripod, lighting is 2 compact flouorescents & one incandescent bulbs in various spots around the room behind the camera or left of subject. Colors are fairly true - this is the most realistic of the 2 photos
This is with flash, ISO 100 on a tripod, same Nikon S210 - here the colors ore bluer than life, and the reds are too bright. But this picture looks more "Sales Catalog Flashy". buyers beware. :evil:
All in all, the problem I was having with grainy pictures seems to have disappeared once I forced the camera to a fixed ISO instead of letting the camera choose the ISO setting.