Worlds most pointless cross B. little stars

[Dusty Ol' Man]

Originally Posted by WaterWitchin

I was gifted a Brassavola nodosa (or was it cordata?) then I got the other. Then received a B. Little Stars, and a digbyana. None have been in my care for a year yet. The cordata, I've bloomed. The rest, not yet. (big shift factor into SH). Surely the digbyana will look different. Now I'm just wondering why I'm giving so much real estate up to these guys... Oh, because I haven't owned and grown them. I'll try to remember this thread as each blooms. Stick around for a couple of years folks!

Four years on, how are they doing now?

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by Dusty Ol' Man

Four years on, how are they doing now?

Ha! Testing my memory, huh Dusty?

The nodosa continues to struggle. Not sure why, but it has to live with all the other Brassavola and get the same care. Has only bloomed once... no noticeable fragrance, at least to me.

cordata... has pretty much climbed out of the glass pot it' in, mostly growing down the side, blooms regularly and in my eye, not all that spectacular for the amount of real estate it takes up.

Little Stars... meh, I grew it for a couple of years. It bloomed and I gifted it elsewhere. Between the four, too much Brassavola species and crosses on the bench and not impressive or interesting enough to keep.

The digbyana... was gifted to me extremely small. I do mean extremely small. Like one pbulb and another just starting to come up. When they say it's a slow grower, that means sloooooow. I think it has maybe four or five pbulbs now. Will try to remember to look. Maybe in another couple years it may be big enough to bloom. The foliage is really interesting... kind of a waxy/silvery strange cuticle so it stays here. Really want to bloom it myself. It took me about a year to figure out it didn't have a problem and that's just the way it looks, by seeing one up close and in person.

Of all the crosses, Yellow Bird and Pvc. Golden Peacock put the others to shame.

[Dusty Ol' Man]

[QUOTE=WaterWitchin;1022194
The digbyana... was gifted to me extremely small. I do mean extremely small. Like one pbulb and another just starting to come up. When they say it's a slow grower, that means sloooooow. I think it has maybe four or five pbulbs now. Will try to remember to look. Maybe in another couple years it may be big enough to bloom. The foliage is really interesting... kind of a waxy/silvery strange cuticle so it stays here. Really want to bloom it myself. It took me about a year to figure out it didn't have a problem and that's just the way it looks, by seeing one up close and in person.
[/QUOTE]

Is the digbyana of the green or blue variety, if you know? I have a few Cattleya hybrids of the blue varieties and all their leaves have that silvery look to the cuticle. The other colors don't.

[Roberta]

Don't understand the green vs blue distinction... Rl. digbyana and Rl. glauca both that that whitish (glaucous) surface on the leaves. So the leaves have sort of a gray-green appearance. Some cultivars of both species have little or no red color, others are quite pink especially on the backs of the flowers, and those often show a bit of red pigment in the leaves as well if grown in very high light. (The ones with little or no color stay green no matter what the light)

[Dusty Ol' Man]

Being unfamiliar with the species, I Googled images. The pictures that came up were of flowers with hairy lips and were either some shade of pale green or pale bluish white. Maybe I was seeing the wrong plant.

[Keysguy]

I'm with you Roberta. I have most of those, but to me they're all "meh".

[Roberta]

Flowers of Rl. digbyana indeed have very hairy lips. (They used to be called "Brassavola" and that's the "B" in Blc. hybrids... to give ruffled lips.)

Here are some that grow for me:http://orchidcentral.org/WebPages/Rh... digbyana.html

Most of the pix don't show leaves, but there is one where you can see the red blush. The alba form, no red pigment anywhere on either flowers or plant

[WaterWitchin]

I didn't get the "blue" either. It was originally classified Brassalova and moved to Rhyncholaelia a looong time ago. I still think of it as Brassavola anyway because lots of folks refer to it that way. Darned taxonomists. I'm far from expert, so listen to Roberta, but it's a species and the only one I know is "green." And yes, silvery cuticle.

[Roberta]

Along with that fantastic lip, the other wonderful thing about Rl. digbyana is the lemony fragrance, especially in the evening. No doubt pollinated by a moth or other night-flying pollinator) Alas, the flowers tend to be short-lived. I don't know how they got lumped with Brassavola in the first place, looks nothing like members of that genus with the terete leaves and heart-shaped lip. (But then, "Epidendrum" was used very broadly too at one time)

The bluish-white color would be an artifact of the photo... someone overcompensated for the yellow-green color. It's hard to photograph accurately, photos tend to come out much greener than what the eye sees. Actual color is more like cream-white, with a bit of green in the segments, which goes to more of a bronze tone for those that have strong pink on the backs of the segments.

[Louis_W]

Quick lesson on Rhyncholaelia as a genus:

digbyana and glauca were moved from brassavola in 1918. Not sure why calling them brassavola has persisted. I have read a letter from a taxonomist suggesting that B. cucullata belongs with them as well but since it is the type species it would make digbyana, glauca, and cuculata the only three brassavolas and the rest would have to change into another genus. Taxonomy in this group seems a little subjective and confused. Youd think DNA might clear things up but it confuses things further. A paper suggested that rhyncholaelia is actually more closely related to guarianathe which doesnt seem right to me, but I do like to defer to good science. Something tells me we dont have it straight yet...