Cycnoches chlorochilon?

[katsucats]

This was sold to me as Cyc. chlorochilon. I know this species is often mislabeled with warscewiczii, but I can never tell what the difference is. So first, is this a chlorochilon?

Secondly, I put the ruler up cause visually the flower is massive. It's kind of hard to tell that it would be going off of pictures online. It's certainly larger than other Ctsm flowers I've seen. Imagine how big it would be if it opened all the way. I guess when you see the pictures you don't get the depth perception. It looks flat in the photo but it's really not.

[Louis_W]

I think one of the main things is that chrlorochilon has upswept petals. Looks like chlorochilon to me but is it fully open? Perhaps we should have another look in a couple days...

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by Louis_W

I think one of the main things is that chrlorochilon has upswept petals. Looks like chlorochilon to me but is it fully open? Perhaps we should have another look in a couple days...

It's taking a while to open so I wasn't sure if it was going to fully open, but I'll keep an eye out.

[Dalachin]

Incredible bloom!

[SG in CR]

I've sort of struggled with that too. I have a local native that looks like C. chlorochilon to me but according to the internet they shouldn't be local here but rather 400 km south of me. As far as I can tell C. warscewiczii has wider petals that go almost horizontal and about 1/3 as wide as they are long, vs. upswept and 1/4 to 1/5 as wide as they are long for C. chlorochilon. As far as I can tell the plants of C. warscewiczii can get larger too. I've seen some with P-bulbs around 18" long, though I've never seen any pictures of other Cycnoches species getting that large.
My C. warscewiczii

My unidentified Cycnoches that I suspect may be C. chlorochilon

[DirtyCoconuts]

all i know is it is beautiful and i like it

[Louis_W]

Originally Posted by SG in CR

C. warscewiczii has wider petals that go almost horizontal and about 1/3 as wide as they are long, vs. upswept and 1/4 to 1/5 as wide as they are long for C. chlorochilon. As far as I can tell the plants of C. warscewiczii can get larger too. I've seen some with P-bulbs around 18" long, ]

These are tricky things to ID plants with because they are extremely variable. Plants that have been line bred will have very different petals and sepals (usually wider and flatter) than wild plants.

As far as the natural range, it seems like C.warscewiczii is from mostly Panama and chlorochilon seems to be mostly down in Columbia. Is that what you found too?

All that said, I think your I unidentified plant looks like warscewiczii.

It's no wonder they hybrid between the two is called C. mass confusion....

[SG in CR]

Originally Posted by Louis_W

As far as the natural range, it seems like C.warscewiczii is from mostly Panama and chlorochilon seems to be mostly down in Columbia. Is that what you found too?

Both my plants are wild type, line bred Cycnoches aren't thing here yet. There is a small group of people doing orchid breeding here. But they stay away from native species for the most part. Though Guarianthes are a notable exception.
C. warscewiczii is still a reasonably common species up into the Nicoya peninsula in northern Costa Rica
C. chlorochilion is supposedly found up to Panama.
I'm not too worried about it, though I should try to go through the botanical descriptions to see how they differentiate the two.

[katsucats]

Okay, so my chlorochilon hasn't completely opened yet it seems, but the fragrance has developed into the vicinity of vanilla, cloves, cinnamon and earl grey tea. It actually reminds me of a loose leaf chai mix I had. Amazing. The quality/complexity of this fragrance is probably up there with Stanhopeas.

[katsucats]

I love smelling the development of a flower's fragrance, because we can imagine that there's a continuous tuning of a number of chemicals that it produces. Apparently when you remove all the tannin bitter complexities from chai tea but turn one of the sweet components of cloves and black tea to 11, it smells kind of like... formaldehyde! Or some kind of preservative... It's a sickly, somewhat sweet plastic smell. Not disgusting in itself, but somehow evokes phobia, like I just instinctively feel like I shouldn't smell this for too long.

Anyways, that's what I'm getting from this today. It went from a delightful chai tea that made me want to put on a fedora, play some jazz over a tube-driven record player and reminisce on the great heydays of the Dutch East India Company, to unpredictably, formaldehyde. I wonder where it will go tomorrow.

And a Google search amazingly confirms my nose isn't broken. It turns out eugenol (clove oil) is often mixed with formaldehyde in medical products, which might explain why I'm picking this up.