Paph. papuanum

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L

lienluu

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I was wondering does anyone have any photos of a true Paph. papuanum they could share? Is it still considered a valid epithet?

Thank you
Lien
 
Paphiopedilum papuanum for botanist is what we call zieckianum, which is a very distinctive, quite hard leafed species... The good ones comes from the Arfak mountains, and have not been in the trade for over a decade. They grow close to a Christian mission, so the only way to get such plants is to go there using a private airplane. Those have uniform red petals, like in Azadehdel article ( RHS Bulletin maybe 15 years ago...) The zieckianum now in the trade come to an area close to Jayapura, and they tend to be more diluted pinkish/purplish.

The horticulture papuanum is in fact a pale variety of violascens. Occasionnally less crappy plants are found, but that's rare. They tend to be quite pale, and the shape is nice, but not that much.

The 'good violascens' come from Karkar, Cui, and a couple of islands off the PNG coast, not in Western Papua.Irian Jaya. Since 15 years I have been the only one to get such plants and still have them. A part of them, like for sangii, has mottled leaf, and another part has plain green leaves. One photo of a plant that came from me here is here:

http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8659

And it came back to me in fact.... :evil: So I have still a dozen or so. They are quite easy growers, and like limestone. Some have a red dorsal as well. Beware that no one in the world can offer such plants, for sure. The expenses to go to Karkar are so unbelievably high that no one will do it again, trust me...

The 'papuanum'/violascens in the trade can come from limestone area or highly acidic swamps. If you don't know which area they come from, the plants will die, either too acid or too alkaline.
 
And it came back to me in fact.... :evil: So I have still a dozen or so. They are quite easy growers, and like limestone. Some have a red dorsal as well. Beware that no one in the world can offer such plants, for sure. The expenses to go to Karkar are so unbelievably high that no one will do it again, trust me...

So are you breeding them and getting them into trade?
 
So are you breeding them and getting them into trade?

Not yet... I have seedlings here that should bloom in a year or two for me, maybe I will release this kind of thing to the trade. The problem being that I have been 'burned' several times with similar things ( I have as well wentworthianum, bougainvilleanum saskianum, etc... that nearly no one still have in the world...). However I did not want to fight against fake flasks or seedlings of those. When I did bougainvilleanum saskianum seedlings, Taiwan and one German nurseries came with very, very cheap seedlings of fake ones. When they bloomed, everyone realized, but in those days I was not in the mood of fighting that my seedlings are the real ones, the others are not... Now maybe I will start to release a couple of other things in the coming years like that, but that's a difficult exercise...
 
Dear Lien,
here you can find the pictures of a typical Paphiopedilum papuanum.

http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12308&highlight=papuanum

The shown plant looks really like the typeplant, which was shown 1915

Here another clone together with the near related Paph. wentworthianum below.

514cd0ae.jpg


Best greetings

olaf
 
That's why people claim that zieckianum is something else... The ones from the Arfak mountain (like Azadehdel published a picture in the Orchid Review) do not have green at the base of the petals, the petals are dark pinkish-red and rarely a few very tiny spots... They would be closer indeed to wentworthianum.
 
Both plants are alive.
The owner tried to propagate them but without success.

Best greetings

Olaf
 

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