Paph micranthum from Kwong See

[NYEric]

Like the refrigerator, you open the door, and the light goes on.

:rollhappy: LOL!

 

[Hien]

Like the refrigerator, you open the door, and the light goes on.

So both types are from GuangXi, one is a unique white pouch plant, and from a different part of the same province comes a really nice deep pink pouched plant. One of these days I'll post a picture of the micranthum I have that is alleged to come from Yunan. All are subtle variations on a lovely theme.

I think there is a different in geography.
Guizhou borders Sichuan (north), Yunnan (west), Guangxi (south)

In vietnamese language they are Quy Chau (maybe Que Chau), Tu xuyen, Van Nam, Quang Tay (I think the meaning are either Precious Land or cinnamon, Four Rivers, Southern cloud, & Western Province respectively, they are four different provinces)
So micranthums from Guizhou will be different from the ones from Guangxi

 

[mccallen]

Ah, those were the good old days, when every month Rands would have a new ad from new stuff from all over the world, long long time ago.

What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.

 

[Jorch]

I think there is a different in geography.
Guizhou borders Sichuan (north), Yunnan (west), Guangxi (south)

Yes, you are right Hien. There is a "Gui Zhou" Province north of Guangxi (which I totally forgot about, my bad) so the micranthum that Leo was talking about could very well come from this province.

If we can find out which "Gui" (in chinese character) was used in reference to that nice micranthum with deep color..

 

[Hien]

What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.

I used to see those ads from R J. Rand on AOS magazins too.
And they are the cheapest prices you can ever find anywhere.
a few bucks for a plants. They are hard to find plants too. One time , I even saw cyp tibeticum.
Another time, besseae from Colombia (not Ecuador or Peru)

 

[Roth]

Hi Sanderianum - thank you for the info and beautiful pictures.
2.) Your observation are wonderful and do match the way my plants grow.
They were VERY slow to establish, and I did encounter that dry yellow-brown leaf die back. It took a couple years to get rid of that. Have not seen it in quite a while now. The roots were clean when Ray Rands sent them, so I did not see the red clay. The KwangSee do seem to grow in spurts, often when the other more common varieties are resting. I don't dry mine in winter, and I had the flower bud blast on the better one of my KwangSee's, so I will try drying them out more next winter.

That's a mystery, I got some of my plants from Maisie in California many years ago, they had this dry brown rot, and since that, all the kwangsee I got always started to have that...

The real fact is that no one has seen them in the wild 'yet'. There is a picture in Phillip Cribb Book of that variety in the wild, but some people told me some stories about that pic... I have seen personnally people planting some plants for the 'scientists' in Tam Dao, to take pictures. The scientists did not know they were fake natural conditions, but those people ( always collectors, they need only money !!!) would not bother to bring people to the real place. That pic does not match as well the clay on the roots...

As for the collector of KwangSee, that's his relatives who collect the plants, so it is "inside the family". No one knows the place exactly, except that it is 70km south of Nanning, more or less.

4.) I also have seen what I suspect are the Vietnamense race with white pouches, and they are definitely a different race of micranthum. The pouches tend to 'hang' very low, and they are a smaller flower. The leaves are bright green with heavy silver tesselation, giving a very bright effect, nothing like the dark almost black green of the true KwangSee race of micranthum.
This is a picture of one,

It is definitely the white pouched micranthum from Viet Nam. You have been lucky, many are much uglier than the one on the picture ! The flowers usually are in the 5cm+/-1 cm, I have seen some 3cm ones once too, a complete batch at a collector's place. Sometimes they have some plants that looks like KwangSee micranthum as well, vey dark leaves, but the pattern is a little bit different ( hard to tell apart without experience...).

5.) A final question; What do you know wbout the race of micranthum called Kwei Chow? or is it Kwie Chow? I suspect it is a province name in the Wade-Giles transliteration system, but what is unique about micranthum from Kwei Chow?

That's Guizhou. Supposedly there are red types of micranthum over there, and the huge flowered paler type. But from my experience, it is a little bit more difficult than that...

For the micranthum KwangSee as an example, 1 man knows the place. There are many colonies of micranthum in GuangXi province, but only 1 or one group has the KwangSee type. In North Viet Nam, Ha Giang, there are many micranthums, and many collectors. But only one is able to get the huge flowered micranthum with pink pouch in that area. Same for the armeniacum album, only 1 collector knows where one colony is. Guizhou, I have seen some ugly micranthum from that province, and some very beautiful ones. In Nanning, some traders have locally collected micranthum with 10+ cm flowers and massive plants ( same for some armeniacum populations, 20cm x 3 cm leaves, they looks like hybrids or armeniacum on steroids). So it is possible to say that one type comes from one area, but not that one area has only that type...

Epiphytic micranthum is not quite a legend, I have seen once in Yunnan a nice clump of micranthum on a sewed off branch. The branch was heavily decayed, and the tree was obviously dying. I think that it is a big problem too with all orchid species, there are populations that are used to get some specific nutrition or growing conditions, and it is difficult to say that there are a single group of optimal conditions to grow a species. Think about humans, you feed an African with a lot of food in Africa, he will stays tall and with muscles. Do the same with an European, and you end up with Dodo-200kg... Or alcohol, the people in Papua New Guinea and the native Aborigens from Australia can become completely mad after one glass. The Swedish can drink some liters without any problems. They are all humans, but with local specificities. Same stands true for all plant species to my mind, most will need similar conditions and perform OK, but some will have very specific requirements...














Thanks in advance
Leo[/QUOTE]

 

[Park Bear]

great thread...thanks for all the info

 

[Leo Schordje]

Thank you one and all for all the information. Sanderianum, your insights are so very valuable. Thank you

 

[streetmorrisart]

So very beautiful. I traded for mine with apprehension because I didn't want to mistreat such a plant, but it's doing fine--I'll be happy if it's half as nice as any here. Thanks...

 

[Leo Schordje]

What happened with that, exactly? I've often been curious.

Strap in - its a long historical and folk-lorical tale.
Well, depending on your political bend (tragety or victory) there are a couple ways to look at what happened. For me around 1980 or so I really got into Paphs. At that time the only import papers really needed were a Phytosanitary for Dept of Ag showing the plants were disease free. None of this CITES stuff, at that time CITES only pertained to Whales, Elephants and Tigers. THe plant references were still under negociation. Then in 1988 CITES was extended to orchids, and USFWS came up with a major tightening of enforcement limiting what orchids could be moved. There were further tightenings of Cites, I think around 1993 and 1998. By 1990 (or 1995?) Ray Rands had decided it was just too difficult to import Paphs from most countries, he tried to shift to seed propagation, but that is a slow process, sorta like watching the grass grow. If you knew Ray, he was (still is) a very active, dynamic guy, the sort that is not happy watching grass grow. Importing was almost instantaneous, seed prop is slow. Ray eventually retired, giving up the business. Almost all commercial guys gave up trying to import, it was just too damn difficult. The CITES revision and resulting changes at USFWS made it a little easier to import some orchids in 2002. BUt basically, CITES pretty much completely killed the legal import market for Paphs, Phrags and Cyps. Fortunately I picked up some micranthum, armeniacum emersonii and malipoense right after they were discovered, I remeber the 1984 era Rands ad, he did not even have the name for emersonii yet, it was just a big white Paph from China. I also bought a couple emersonii from 'Doc' Emerson Charles, the guy that the species was named for. His 'Expose Yourself to Orchids' photo still makes the rounds occasionally. He got the knickname 'Doc' because he had run for county coroner in one of his forays into politics. He had no medical training to speak of. A fun guy to talk to. Most of the parvi's I picked up back then are still with me today. (knock on wood) So that was the 'good old days', no paperwork - anybody could be an importer, it was as simple as going to the post office. The bad news was, a location with a new showy orchid species could be wiped out in 4 weeks. (but wait?, even with CITES isn't that just what happened to kovachii?) so it is a differnt world we live in now. Now someone from the EU puts a picture up, the USA members all put up posts wringing their hands about how long will it take for this or that to be legal. I have accepted the fact that CITES won't go away, I didn't mind waiting until legal Phrag kovachii seedlings were available from Alfred Manrique. Rather than try to get new stuff - I now try to focus on keeping what I have healthy, because it can't be replaced.
Cheers
Leo

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

The date can be pinpointed specifically- 1990. As of Jan 1990, all paphs and phrags became App. I for CITES. The impact wasn't felt the first year...Rands and the other importers sold the collected stock they had acquired before 12/31/1989...and prices did go up, but minimally. It was a good year- tigrinum was described, based on plants that came in previously, but that was end for cheap prices on paphs. I still have a 1990 price list from Maisie (the Ca branch) that apologizes for the price increases...we would kill for those prices now. Take care, Eric

 

[mccallen]

Strap in - its a long historical and folk-lorical tale.
Well, depending on your political bend (tragety or victory) there are a couple ways to look at what happened. For me around 1980 or so I really got into Paphs. At that time the only import papers really needed were a Phytosanitary for Dept of Ag showing the plants were disease free. None of this CITES stuff, at that time CITES only pertained to Whales, Elephants and Tigers. THe plant references were still under negociation. Then in 1988 CITES was extended to orchids, and USFWS came up with a major tightening of enforcement limiting what orchids could be moved. There were further tightenings of Cites, I think around 1993 and 1998. By 1990 (or 1995?) Ray Rands had decided it was just too difficult to import Paphs from most countries, he tried to shift to seed propagation, but that is a slow process, sorta like watching the grass grow. If you knew Ray, he was (still is) a very active, dynamic guy, the sort that is not happy watching grass grow. Importing was almost instantaneous, seed prop is slow. Ray eventually retired, giving up the business.
Leo

Thanks for the info. Too bad about the business, looking at old ads now is just taunting!