When the apple falls surprisingly far away from the tree

[Silje]

I got a dendrobium 'Black Mickey Mouse' some months ago. For a while now it's been working on a spike and the buds have turned darker and darker. When I've been searching for pictures of Mickey Mouse I only find the Disney version. The nursery where I bought the plant no longer has it on stock and has removed the pictures, I think. Or my googling sucks.

Either way, I've been keeping an eye on the buds and I wasn't surprised when they they turn dark. I'm a sucker for purple/lilac dendrobiums and it's so me to go for dark dens so it was all very expected. I couldn't recall the picture that I based my purchase on, but I had this idea that it was an antelope-den of some kind.

Eventually, just before the first buds opened up, I e-mailed the nursery and got the parentage of my plant. It looks like this:

One of the parents is a hybrid between dendrobium canaliculatum and dendrobium johannis.








This hybrid is called dendrobium 'Rachelle Simpson' and looks like this:


Now, if you team Rachelle here up again with the canaliculatum, I would think that the outcome would be a twisted antelope-kind of dendrobium perhaps with quite a bit of yellow and maybe some pink/purple coloring. But in fact you get this:



Say hi to Dendrobium 'Black Mickey Mouse'. A dark burgundy, bluish purple little guy with 'straight hair' and with just a tiny bit of yellow on the lip and edges. Honestly, Mickey has very little in common with any of his parents.

Now, if I was canaliculatum I think I'd ask Rachelle if she's got something she wants to tell me. But since I'm not, I'm just going to be fascinated by the outcome and enjoy the flowers.

[Magnus A]

Strange...

First reactionis that I got a wrongly labeled plant. But as it is very hard to see the actual shape of the sepals an petals of the parents due to the twisting, I just say that you got lucky with the colors!

:-)

[Island Girl]

Originally Posted by Silje

[.....] *Now, if I was canaliculatum I think I'd ask Rachelle if she's got something she wants to tell me. But since I'm not, I'm just going to be fascinated by the outcome and enjoy the flowers.

yep, I would ask the same thing!

I would also assume that it was wrongly labelled, but I really don't know much about Dendrobiums, so you can't really count my comment... But, it doesn't quite seem right, right? I dunno... *Buuut I will say, that whatever it is, Mickey Mouse or no, it is very pretty, and I LOVE the dark coloring!

[Silje]

Originally Posted by Magnus A

Strange...

First reactionis that I got a wrongly labeled plant. But as it is very hard to see the actual shape of the sepals an petals of the parents due to the twisting, I just say that you got lucky with the colors!

:-)

I've been thinking the same. Does antelope dendrobiums develop curls and weird sepals and petals as the flower matures? I don't have a lot of them, but I think I re-call that they open up and are twisted and cool right from the beginning.

Anyways, I'm not complaining about little Mickey here. He's certainly a cutie and I do love dark colors in orchids so I'm happy. A bit confused and surprised, but happy.

At the same time I bought another dendrobium that actually would have been a more likely outcome of this combo, but this is a hybrid of Dendrobium Nicola deBruyne-Choon x Bobby Mesina'Blue' - which makes sense. But from looking at the parentage this is roughly what I'd expect Mickey to look like.

[Silje]

Originally Posted by Island Girl

yep, I would ask the same thing!

I would also assume that it was wrongly labelled, but I really don't know much about Dendrobiums, so you can't really count my comment... But, it doesn't quite seem right, right? I dunno... *Buuut I will say, that whatever it is, Mickey Mouse or no, it is very pretty, and I LOVE the dark coloring!

No, it really does not seem quite right, this one. I'm also thinking that something must have gone wrong in the labelling here. Unless he's oone of these kids that are born with blue eyes and dark hair, but in a little while he'll be brown-eyed and blond. You know? We'll see how the flower matures and if it changes over time.

But he is Oh So Cute! I really like him. He just fits my dendrobium colour scheme perfectly. That must have been why I bought him in the first place. I must have seen a picture and decided that I HAD to have him. That's normally how the story goes whenever orchids are involved.

[tucker85]

Even if it's not what you expected, it has some very nice colors.