Orchid Borealis

This was purchased as Dendrobium guerreroi , division of  'CC9607'  from Troy Meyers (TN6874), but I'm guessing that this is actually D. ionopus .  Troy, who is great at keeping records, told me that he purchased this plant from Tropical Orchid Farm in April 15 1996 (TOF's original tag: F2064 Dendrobium guerreroi x sib).  It is great to keep the record straight; history of plants are lost most of the time since people don't keep good record!  Thank you, Troy! Indeed,  The Dendrobium  by H. P. Wood (p.645) mentions that some plants of D. ionopus imported from Philippines were incorrectly identified as D. guerreroi .  Both of these species belong to Section Calcarifera, a section with 50-60 species. Species epithet of D. ionopus means "violet", which refers to the purple marking (dots) at the base of lip on flowers and the young leaves with purple stripes.  Mine lacks this purple dots on the flower, and I haven't noticed purple stripes on the leaves

My friend, Mauro Rosim, told me that the identification of this plant is not correct.  It is probably an undescribed species.  I'm leaving the information about C. mirandae in this post, and I'll try to update the post when I learn more about this undescribed species. Cattleya mirandae  was described relatively recently (2005;  IOSPE link ).  It was originally described as  Hoffmannseggella mirandae ( link to the photo of the original description).   The genus name of this group has been bounced around quite a bit, and it could be confusing.  After looking into the evidences presented by molecular phylogeny, I think that rumping them into Cattleya appears to be the least confusing treatment scientifically.  Some hobbyists don't feel right about this, but we should evaluate the evidence under the principle of the Latin binomial system, where the genus name should represent the evolutionary relationships.   This article by van den Berg is relatively easy to understan

Happy New Year to all! There were lots of positive aspects of my 2015, but I can't say that it was my best year for me in many aspects.  With orchids, I became obsessed with getting rid of the bush snails (hopefully I can write about what I learned from reviewing snail literatures some day).  I tried bunch of chemicals, and there were quite a bit of casualties ( Phalaenopsis species were most influenced by this).  I'm guessing that it was probably less harmful if I didn't declare the war against those tough guys.  Oh well.  I'm hoping that 2016 will be a better year.  Indeed, there are quite a few interesting orchids (to me) which are starting to grow or flower now. This one is imported as Cynorkis lilacina from Malala via Botanica Ltd. in July 2015. But after talking to two knowledgeable friends, it appears to be miss-identified.  They both suggested that it could be C. baronii .   By looking at photos, there is also some similarity to  Cynorkis  constellata