phal pulchra 'orchidglade'

[cnycharles]

I've had this plant for awhile, from Ellenberger's Orchid Eden near Rochester, NY. I'm sure lots of people have divisions of this clone which was distributed for quite a while under the name phal speciosa 'orchidglade'. Reportedly, phal speciosa isn't in cultivation and might be extinct in the wild. It had been found in the 1800's in a very small area, and no others had been found supposedly. Speciosa is supposed to have a very strong fragrance; Doty Ellenberger had told me that the fragrance was supposed to fill the greenhouse when the sun was out, so at the time I thought it might be speciosa. I can pick up a slight nice fragrance, but nothing really strong though if it were in a warm, sunny greenhouse that might change! Pulchra is supposed to be found in a range of areas that have warm to cool temps. I've flowered my other phal pulchra in very cool temps, but this one I had kept warm like I thought speciosa would need. I've since moved the other pulchra into the same warmer temps, and it has flowered there as well. ... go figure,..... It has very nice color, and this time was the first it had had three flowers open at once (one just fell off). Color is hard to catch on digital; it's both darker purple and more saturated than I can get a picture of though if I knew my color editing a lot better and spent a long time at it, might be able to get a closer color. A fair number of pulchras can have white streaks across the petals/sepals, but 'orchidglade' has pretty clean flowers

these flowers grew facing downwards sort of like phal mariae is supposed to. usually they are a bit more upright and open

 

[luvsorchids]

Love the color :clap::clap:.

Regarding speciosa, supposedly Phal. tetraspis 'C#1' is really speciosa. I've seen it labeled as tetraspis v. speciosa and spesiosa v. tetraspis . I think I will leave it up to the taxonomists to battle out.

Susan

 

[Hera]

OOOOOOOOOOO, lovely!

 

[cnycharles]

Love the color :clap::clap:.

Regarding speciosa, supposedly Phal. tetraspis 'C#1' is really speciosa. I've seen it labeled as tetraspis v. speciosa and spesiosa v. tetraspis . I think I will leave it up to the taxonomists to battle out.

Susan

I've also seen the 'darker' tetraspis (c#1) and wondered about that,... one of the varieties of speciosa in christenson's book describes a red flower but that it has white and red here and there randomly. It could be that when first found, tetraspis was more like c#1, but some breeders went about to make it 'more even' to try and get it all or more evenly white. ... probably thought that nobody would want uneven flowers

 

[arcticshaun]

They almost look like they're made of porcelain, quite pretty.

Shaun

 

[SlipperFan]

Looks like you have a nice keiki, as well.

 

[mkline3]

super substantial flowers! They look like glass.

 

[Clark]

That's hot!
When would you seperate the keiki?

 

[cnycharles]

That's hot!
When would you seperate the keiki?

Well, it's been ready to take off for quite a while; the roots are fairly long and a good number of them. I'm not sure if I have another keiki already potted... are there people interested? I have placed a good number of previous keikis in orchid club auctions

 

[Hera]

Well, I know one person who's interested. It could join the luddemanniana that I have.

 

[biothanasis]

Impressive colour and shape Charles!!! You are really a phal expert!!!!

 

[cnycharles]

Impressive colour and shape Charles!!! You are really a phal expert!!!!

um, well, not an expert, but an intermediate advanced grower of some of the species. I can barely keep the chinese phals and some others alive in my conditions, much less flower (but thanks for the vote!)

 

[likespaphs]

that's so neat.
the substance is crazy!

 

[Elena]

Wow, that's some juicy colour!

 

[NYEric]

Interesting color.