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Phalaenopsis mariae

I received this plant as a small seedling from Olympic Orchids 10 years ago.  This species recycles old flowering stalk, so new flowering branches are added to the old ones.  It was growing in an area where many orchids were forming a tangled mess.  I had to re-pot it, and during the process of extraction, I probably lost 30-40% of buds (broke a couple branches).

Phalaenopsis mariae is from Philippines (Luzon, Mindoro, Mindanao, and Sulu-Archipelago) and north eastern tip of Borneo Island, growing under 600m of elevation.  It seems to do well under an intermediate temperature, and moderate amount of light.



Dissected flower.  The scale below is mm.  The right petal, dorsal sepal, and right lateral sepal are showing the adaxial sufrace (i.e., the side facing front of the flower opposite of the stem).  The abaxial surface (closer to the stem, back-side) is shown for the left petal and lateral sepal.





The Lip before the removal of the side-lobes.  It has somewhat "diamond"-shape near the tip.

Lip.  The side lobes are removed to show the 2 sets of callus (whitish parts). The anterior callus (toward the tip) is clearly split into two like a snake tongue.  At the base of the tongue, there is some split structure right on top of it.  The posterior callus (toward the base) is also supposed to be split, but this flower didn't show the split clearly. 

This species is somewhat similar to Phalaenopsis bastianii.  But it can be easily distinguished by  the shape of the keel on the lip.  In the photo below, the middle part of the lip shows the keel which is standing up steeply (the purple part) left side of the white anterior callus.  In P. bastianii, this part doesn't stick up so high, and it is more like a gentle hill (rather than a steep cliff).  The difference can be more clearly shown here.

Profile view of the lip.  The side lobes were removed.  Note that there are several small appendages around the posterior callus.

Somehow the posterior (toward the base) callus seems to be different from the plant from Cyber Wild Orchid Mart (link).  I'm not sure if this is individual or regional differences.







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