Paphiopedilum ooii and Paphiopedilum xkimballianum

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Roth

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Last week I visited Malaysia and Sabah, I discussed with the collector of the Paph. ooii. There is only one man who knows the location in Sabah, absolutely no one else, and except his brother in law, he never accepted or allowed anyone to come to the place it is coming from. He has been the only source for that species.

He had a funny plant, I will post the pictures in this thread tomorrow, a Paphiopedilum xkimballianum, rothschildianum x dayanum. The plant was the size of a rothschildianum, pointed leaves, mottled, 14 growths. Rothschildianum is still plentiful in the wild, and there are many locations in and outside the Kinabalu park. As for the natural hybrids, it is the fourth time I see a plant of it. I have seen before 2 plants in Ranau, at the War Memorial, 1 plant in a nursery on the way to Sandakan and 1 last week, much bigger than any of the other 3. Apparently it is not extremely rare or not extremely common, he said he founds usually 3-5 such plants a year. It is therefore not a legend, and that natural hybrid really exists.

As for ooii, the news were extremely disappointing in fact. There are still some colonies in the wild, but few. Most have been ordered by one famous Malaysian nurseryman over the years, who exported several hundreds with CITES - go to the Trade database www.cites.org

The interesting fact, the collector has seen 2 plants with more than 5 flowers per stem, one with 12 flowers. All the others were, according to him and the mass of photos he had, much smaller, with usually 3-5 flowers/stem maximum. The flower stem by itself is not that tall, 60-80 cm. There are Paphiopedilum topperii in the very same area, and a couple rothschildianum. They grow mixed with ooii. It would not be impossible that those 2 plants with 10+ flower stems are natural hybrids of ooii and kolopakingii. Nearly all the ooii plants are in fact the size of Paph. stonei, a little bit larger maybe, but not more, and not as huge as the plant used to describe that species. I expect that, whilst it is an extremely rare species in cultivation, when the legal plants exported to USA and Europe will bloom, there will be a disappointment on to those large stonei-like plants with 3-4 10-12 cm flowers the shape of an average praestans...
 
If Paph ooii was described based on a hybrid then the description is invalid and the smaller, more uniform plants, then represent an undescribed species... Of course, the real big question is whether one can prove that x ooii is indeed a hybrid.
 
If Paph ooii was described based on a hybrid then the description is invalid and the smaller, more uniform plants, then represent an undescribed species... Of course, the real big question is whether one can prove that x ooii is indeed a hybrid.

I think it is impossible to prove it, but the original plant used for the description of the species is absolutely not representative of the species no matter what it is supposed to be.

Even when you type Paphiopedilum ooii in google or images.google.com , you can find only the picture of the plant used for the description with more than 3 flowers. There are 7 different plants pictured in Google, all of them are 3 flowers, except 1 with 4 flowers...
 
Great, thanks for the update Sandie. Now find out who these people are with legal plants in Europe and the US so we can get in on it! I really don't care if they have 3-5 flowers, I just want ooii.
PS. It's funny you compare ooii with the size of praestans... I always thought ooii was really the lost species of glanduliferum!
 
Great, thanks for the update Sandie. Now find out who these people are with legal plants in Europe and the US so we can get in on it! I really don't care if they have 3-5 flowers, I just want ooii.
PS. It's funny you compare ooii with the size of praestans... I always thought ooii was really the lost species of glanduliferum!

Mmmh, the flowers are roughly the size of an OK praestans....

As to find them, I am afraid most of the exported plants except a very few cultivated for some years :D are dead since long time... It is a species easy to grow when rooted, but as tricky as a stonei to establish, especially with a quite fat broken rhizome, huge leaves sucking up the water and all roots dead... Same goes for intaniae, that is oddly very close to ooii... Some intaniae have many flowers stem with massive plants, most of them are the size of a medium haynaldianum plant, 3-4 flowers per stem.

Another note, dendrobium piranha in fact grows in the exact location of ooii...
 
I have a couple of ooii seedlings coming shortly (hopefully the next week or two). I hope it is the right thing.

;-)
 
I have a couple of ooii seedlings coming shortly (hopefully the next week or two). I hope it is the right thing.

;-)

From where are they coming from? So far, only Sun Moon offered flasks, and they were scam, like most of sun moon offers, be careful.

Ching Hua and a couple others informed to me that there are no more seedlings, flasks or plants of ooii available in Taiwan... There can be a few around however, who knows. Ooii is however very easy to grow if the plants have roots, lots of water, shade, lots of fertilizer, a bit like kolopakingii. Jungle plants are notorious for being amongst the trickiest species to establish however.
 
Very interesting... :) But I don't think ooii is going to be at the top of my wish list anytime soon..
[QUOTEAnother note, dendrobium piranha in fact grows in the exact location of ooii...
][/QUOTE]
There's a plant called dendrobium piranha..? Cool! :D
 
From where are they coming from? So far, only Sun Moon offered flasks, and they were scam, like most of sun moon offers, be careful.

Ching Hua and a couple others informed to me that there are no more seedlings, flasks or plants of ooii available in Taiwan... There can be a few around however, who knows. Ooii is however very easy to grow if the plants have roots, lots of water, shade, lots of fertilizer, a bit like kolopakingii. Jungle plants are notorious for being amongst the trickiest species to establish however.

Located in Australia. I believe they are the real deal.
 
Paphiopedilum x kimballianum

05102009092.jpg


Interesting that there are ooii flasks in Australia... Can you pm me the nursery who has that ?
 
Sorry I meant I am getting a couple of plants, not flasks. These will be seedlings, I haven't heard of any flasks as such.

Will post some pictures when I get the plants though.
 
The x kimballianum looks interesting.. Any pics of the flower..?

I don't think this plant will survive long in fact, as you can see with the various foliar rots that started, I could see one erwinia, several cercospora spots, and the root system was nicely attacked by rhizoctonia. They keep reusing the same beds to store their plants, sick or not, and never use any fungicides or disinfect. By the way, the leaves are in the 40 cm range

Of course it never flowered, it was a freshly jungle collected plant. But it is absolutely sure it is x kimballianum.

There were quite a lot of rothschildianums from the same collection at that time, same batch, same condition. Rothschildianum is still common and plentiful, there is one nursery in Ranau which gets some hundreds jungle plant every few months, just have to visit to see it...
 
I could only find this "fuzzy" picture on Tanka's website; it looks like it is a picture from Olaf, so maybe he has some better pictures:

http://www.orchid.or.jp/orchid/people/tanaka/InterOrShow/enGermany.html

Robert

I think it is the artificial hybrid there. So far I have seen once a jungle kimballianum in bloom, in Sandakan, and the petals were much more horizontal than the artificial ones I have seen. It's funny actually that the natural hybrids barely resemble the artificial grexes in most cases.

The dayanum growing near rothschildianum are of the large type, with 40cm+ leafspan plants and flowers in the range of 20 cm.

Most of the dayanum we had in Europe are either fake, or what they sell as "petri" which is a crappy small type of dayanum - and not the actual petri. So if they used such dayanum x roth to make xKimballianum they are off target...
 
An artificial hybrid will be 50:50 genes from each parent. Natural hybrids will vary in the percentages from each parent, as they get naturally backcrossed to a parent species, or rearrange their genes over generations through breeding with other hybrids.
 
Regardless, kimballianum looks great! Would like to get one.. :D

I don't think this plant will survive long in fact, as you can see with the various foliar rots that started, I could see one erwinia, several cercospora spots, and the root system was nicely attacked by rhizoctonia. They keep reusing the same beds to store their plants, sick or not, and never use any fungicides or disinfect. By the way, the leaves are in the 40 cm range

Yes, I know how difficult it is to establish jungle-collected plants. I have seen plants in worse condition which are actually put for sale at orchid shows..
 
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