The first AQ award in Taiwan

[valenzino]

No, Michael Ooi bred the Penang Violacea, then he used that Penang Violacea to make more 'clear and clean' violacea alba to sell... He made it first, on purpose.

The second thing that is far from clear is the source of those violacea dark blue, still originally from Michael Ooi. To my mind they are hybrids of Xth generation. There is no dark blue violacea in the wild, even remotely close like that. I remember I heard somewhere that there could have been some other species such as venosa in the ancestry, many generations. In Malaysia, many violacea are not pure bred anyway, some even have back some lueddemaniana. What is very suspicious with those blue violacea is that apparently the original crosses are producing white, pink, and blue. it is not really normal I am afraid...

The bellina alba are purely a scam, I have seen only 2 times jungle bellina alba in face.

The bellina alba on the market have been bred on purpose with violacea alba, as "bellina alba" appeared on the market very recently, at a time where everyone knows that bellina and violacea are different species...

The bellina coerulea, the history is far more complicated. There are 2 different simultaneous origins of bellina coerulea. One happens to be 3 plants - maybe 4 - jungle collected. They are real marvels, I have seen one in bloom sold to Krairit in Thailand for 8000USD - that plant subsequently died.

Another one in Malaysia is said to have produced flasks, selfing, and siblings with krairit plant. So far, I got flasks of both supposedly, from 2 nurseries in Malaysia. Only one entire flask was coerulea, the remaining was pure garbage, hybrids of harlequins... Another scam.

A couple years later, Taiwan started to sell bellina coerulea, but from a 'different' parent. So far I am sure that the Taiwanese bellina coerulea are in fact Samera coerulea...

Agree on everything but not on the dark coerulea violacea.I can agree that proably the norton line breeding that cames originally from Michael Ooi,can be x generation hybrids.
But there are 3 very interesting plants(1 still alive the other 2 died) arrived in a bunch of wild collected violacea.The original plants have never been released.The owners have reproduced them...up to 3000 plants but unfortunately during a show in Europe their workers given wrong proportion fertilizer to the plants(1/100 instead of 1/1000) and killed many of them.A good number of them still alive and getting back to flowering size but owners will only sell few after all plants wll flower to select the best for next generation.
In this case all plants reproduced have given coerulea result and not a mix.
The plants are very slow grower and difficult and die easily.
Here a photo of one of seedling I had the luck to have as a gift from them,before the disaster.Like always the photo cant catch the real colour.
Also attached a photo of a true violacea alba.

 

[e-spice]

Here's some info from the Orchidview website, where the blue violaceas first started appearing. http://www.orchidview.com/Birth_of_the_Blues.htm

I have a blue violacea I got from the Nortons. I got it as a seedling and have grown it for about four years. I was thrilled when the first bud started opening and I could tell it was going to be blue. It has improved significantly on subsequent bloomings. Below is the last flowering. Color is pretty accurate, which, as many have noted, is very difficult to capture in a photograph for some reason.

The second thing that is far from clear is the source of those violacea dark blue, still originally from Michael Ooi. To my mind they are hybrids of Xth generation. There is no dark blue violacea in the wild, even remotely close like that. I remember I heard somewhere that there could have been some other species such as venosa in the ancestry, many generations. In Malaysia, many violacea are not pure bred anyway, some even have back some lueddemaniana. What is very suspicious with those blue violacea is that apparently the original crosses are producing white, pink, and blue. it is not really normal I am afraid...

 

[valenzino]

the photo of the violacea blue in my post was so terrible,here a link for a better photo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35673552@N06/3507923162/sizes/l/


Nice Norton.Like it!

 

[cnycharles]

i've seen plants in the u.s. that are the result of sib and self crossings of plants that were slightly indigo more than the standard color, and they have been consistently taking the more 'blue' ones each time. the first ones really weren't dark or blue, but a little different than the standard purple violacea. some of these I would think would be more likely to be a blue violacea since they weren't taken from plants that really had much dark color or blue at all, just slightly different (maybe the far end of a color cline), and were developed into what's blue now.
what is supposed to be the 'standard' for what qualifies as a 'bellina coerulea'? I'm less likely to believe a bellina coerulea being a true species than I am a violacea coerulea, but I don't really know that much (smile)

 

[Roth]

Here a photo of one of seedling I had the luck to have as a gift from them,before the disaster.Like always the photo cant catch the real colour.
Also attached a photo of a true violacea alba.

Very beautiful violacea coerulea... In the Norton line, I have seen some that were far, far, darker than that, that's why it is very suspicious. The other suspicious thing being that some flowered 'albino' and some flowered standard, whilst a few did not have the color extending up to the petal tips. So maybe the Norton are real violacea coerulea, but so far I would say there was some micholitzii somewhere in the lineage before, and another species, I have heard about venosa or lueddemaniana, the latter having been used to make darker violacea quite a long time ago, so both are possible...

As for the bellina coerulea, I have seen the plant fresh from the jungle at Krairit, in bloom, so there is no doubt it really and truly exists... Ng had another one that I have seen, and Creative Orchid another one, the latter being the ownership apparently of a wealthy malaysian grower who loves to grow garden-table size phals gigantea... But the ones from Taiwan are most likely Samera coerulea, there is no lineage up to those jungle plants from their seedlings...

 

[cnycharles]

here is a link to a pic of one of the parents of the 'violacea alba' I bought from tops orchids (the plant I got was seedling of Phal violacea 'alba' '1170' X Phal violacea 'alba' 'MO1K')

http://topsorchid.20m.com/cgi-bin/i/D338violalba.jpg

and here is a link to what's listed at tops orchids as being 'penang violacea'
http://topsorchid.20m.com/D150tops.html#top

see any difference? the violacea albas really have a diamond-shaped lip, and if you look at the penang violacea and the micholitzii, they also have the diamond-shaped lip. the interesting thing is, the seedling from tops orchids I mentioned above sold as violacea alba select, is very flat but it is also very white. when I look at most pics of violacea alba and penang violacea, they all have green color to it. this flower is really flat and very white.
opinions? another interesting thing is that on tops orchids' species gallery, they have a plant they call 'violacea alba' that looks exactly like what they also call violacea (borneo), that the shape is exactly like many of their bellinas except with no color, which would seem to make it a true bellina alba. I bought a bellina alba from bigleaforchids a number of years ago, and it seemed to have a different shape from the 'albas' I have now, unfortunately I dried it out one too many times and it died and they didn't have any more for sale. I always wonder if that were a true bellina alba

also btw, my second violacea alba which I got as flask from burleigh park in australia, looks much like the plant valenzino shows as being a true violacea alba so I'm happy; it really does look like a 'species' to me both flowers and plant