Can someone tell me what the parents of that natural hybrid are? I have a cross made with it, and am curious of the contributions...
highly speculative Ray. If I remember right, Averyanov thinks one of the parents are hirsutisimum. Possibly with helenae, barbigerum, or henryanum.
Stabilized natural hybrid of paphiopedilum henryanum and something else, it will behave exactly like an henryanum for the color, minus the spots... There is no variability or nearly so in the wild herrmanii...
The weird thing is that it is for sure coming out of natural hybrids of henryanum some dozens generations ago, because the flower pouch, the plants, and the flower shape are nearly identical with henryanum... Or maybe they are just two sister species from a same ancestor, who knows... Averyanov pointed that it is an hybrid of esquirolei x helenae or something like that, where we wonder how herrmanii would have got the pink pouch from...
I think he missed the big pink pouch and focused on the wavy green dorsal with no spots. But I would have just called it a mutant henry, and not even worry about the hybrid issue.
I do believe a key element in Averyanov's belief that it is a natural hybrid is his observation of distribution in the wild. He says he has only seen it occur as single individual plants (multigrowth plants, but only one individual at at location) sandwiched between helenae and hirsustissimum. He will see thousands of the the others, then a single x hermanii. If it were a species, one would expect to stumble on to colonies where there would be multiple different clones scattered in an area. This is one of the key items that convinces him that it is a chance hybrid. I am inclined to agree with his expertise, though who knows. Perhaps some DNA study in the future will shed light. If there ever is money available to fund that sort of research. Averanov is a botanist contracted by the Vietnam government to survey and map the flora of Vietnam. The key interest is in the commercially valuable forest trees, such as the rosewoods and other lumber trees. He is locating high biodiversity regions for the planning of future national parks and reserves to protect the sources of the key economic species. The goal being conservation by preserving areas of high biodiversity. The orchids are his personal hobby, but he observes the orchids while he is doing his forest research. The point is he has more time on the ground in Vietnam as a professional botanist than any one else. I trust his opinion over many with less experience.
That would definitely make for a good logical eco argument in favor of its hybrid status. Averyanov has definitely covered a lot of ground in Vietnam, so it would be good to hear if there are other field observations suggesting large stable populations of hermanii, or proximity to other species. Hirsutisimum is a very widespread species in Vietnam and sympatric with several other species (also according to Averyanov).
The story is a bit different for herrmanii, they come by batches of 20k-100kg+ ( though now a batch is about 5-10kg those days, a bit over collected), nowhere near hirsutissimum or helenae. In the early days Averyanov relied on the professional dealers to get most of his data, and they were always showing to him one or two plants, not more, sometimes a few, but never in the wild ( they are collected by the minorities only, who are not very keen to bring anyone, herrmanii was with vietnamense one of the best kept secrets in terms of real location...). At a point I did the same mistake, so I do not blame him... There are two options: - What Averyanov has seen is a natural hybrid of helenae and hirsutissimum, or other natural hybrids, as single individuals, that are not herrmanii, and he made a mistake... It is hard to believe that he would not have noticed the typical henryanum pouch on herrmanii. - He has seen only what the traders wanted him to see. What happens too, sometimes when there is a valuable plant in bloom, like herrmanii or canhii, the traders mix 1-2 plants in bloom that were expensive, with esquirolei (2US/kg...) or tiny seedlings of micranthum (3US/kg), to try to sell the whole crap batch of esquirolei or micranthum at the herrrmanii or canhii price. Some traders are fooled, but Averyanov being a botanist, just saw a stockpile of esquirolei or helenae with a few blooming plants of herrmanii. He ordered sometimes photos from the traders ( some are in his books), and the traders just picked up a clump in bloom, stuffed it random in the forest, and took the photos... I know because, like for another Paphiopedilum book, I met some nearly illiterate countryside plant hunters in Vietnam and China that had complete sets of photos whose one or two were very famous, and credited to other people ( foreigners of course...). For the cypripedium even, with the Chinese, Holger Perner photo of cypripedium singchii/subtropicum in the wild has been taken by the real collector, who has a complete set of photos of the same plants... and Holger was not on the trip at all. The same with Au Yong who brought too Phillip Cribb in Sarawak to see stonei in the wild, only forgetting that Au Young had planted the said stonei a couple of years before in that location... Other than that, from the trade point of view, herrmanii is much more rare than henryanum, but it comes in batches whose size and composition is identical to henryanum, few kilos, some big, some small plants, the leaves can be slightly stiffer than henryanum, and variability. What is puzzling too is that there has never. ever been a single herrmanii with even a single dot on the dorsal or petals that came out... so if it is an hybrid originally, after dozens of generations, the dots disappeared, which means they were not favored by the pollinator of herrmanii... or the trantuanhii is the other side of this kind of natural hybrids after many generations, in this case both could well come from a henryanum x coccineum background originally, some colonis having differentiated into herrmanii, some others in trantuananhii .. Selfing of herrmanii gives plain herrmanii... so it is stable, and fits the definition of a species.
