Paph Mem. Floyd Swink

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Leo Schordje

wilted blossom
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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.

Floydd%20Swink-1199a.jpg

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

Floydd%20Swink-1199b.jpg

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.
 
Leo,

Your knowledge of interesting (and sometimes useless, but not in this case!) info is boundless. :) Thanks for the lesson. Cheers Bud!

-Ernie
 
Leo,

Your knowledge of interesting (and sometimes useless, but not in this case!) info is boundless. :) Thanks for the lesson. Cheers Bud!

-Ernie

Floyd lived in your neck of the woods, you would have known him if you weren't so damn young. :poke: He died almost ten years ago.

You're just down the road from Femi-Lab. Look at the black & white picture in the Femi-Lab Visitor Center of the prairie seed collecting trip at Markum Prairie, where the seed for the Fermi-Lab prairie was collected. It is a group photo of the seed collecting team. In the back row, behind Bob Betz is a 19 year old with dark sun glasses, dark brown hair in a pony tail & scruffy beard, fairly trim - that's me.

I'm not a history buff - I'm just getting old.
Leo
 
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Quite frankly the flower doesn't do much for me BUT I love the story & history lesson! ;)
 
Very interesting post, Leo, and I like the flower, too.

I keep telling myself that getting old is much better than the alternative.
 
Very interesting post, Leo, and I like the flower, too.

I keep telling myself that getting old is much better than the alternative.
Can't disagree with that!

The flower is lovely, and the history lesson interesting. I like the natural colors of the first flower best -- I'm not a fan of direct flash. (Glad I could be of help, Leo.)
 
I keep telling myself that getting old is much better than the alternative.

I think there are a lot of us here that are thinking this way. I am especially blessed as the doctors told my parents I would never live to be six years old and now I am more than ten times that old. I can assure you that getting old with all its aches and pains is better than the alternative.
 
I've looked at these pics a number of times and I'm still not sure if I like the flower or not. The size of the flower is interesting which could lead to some interesting hybrids if bred with P. helene, barbigerum or even henryanum.
 
Interesting thought. Plant is medium sized, flower looks smallish compared to the plant. Those species would improve flower vs plant size ratio.
 
(Joining in long enough to comment ....)

I took a photo of the clone I bloomed, outdoors against a very weathered red fence on a bright day but beneath a tree that afforded some shade, for what it's worth. I used the photo as a grace picture on this web page:

http://www.iosoc.com/membership_information.shtml

What I enjoyed about the flower was that neither concolor nor yappianum (jogjae) have much in the way of red in the lateral petals or in the dorsal sepal. Yet red suffuses those segments in the progeny.

And yappianum (jogjae) has a saturated red pouch due to glaucophyllum, yet Mem. Floyd Swink has a pure lime green pouch.

Funny how that works.
 
It's fun how old posts become new when someone joins and brings a thread up-to-date! Looking at that flower again, I wonder if concolor v. longipetalum is in the background.
 
The concolor I used was one I acquired as v. chonburi, essentially just a geographical marker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chonburi_Province

I bought it in '91 or '92 from some nursery in Washington state, I think.

I'm pretty sure the concolor was the pod parent for the cross.

I'm also pretty sure I reproduced it at some point though I don't recall the disposition of the flasks.
 

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