Paph Complex hybrid 'Starship'

[Roberta]

The fan gets pretty far advanced before the roots start. And then the roots have to develop (while the fan finishes maturing) before the flower starts. So that makes all of these rather slow relative to many other orchids. The results are worth the wait, you just need an extra bit of patience (over and above the patience that all orchids require ) For the multiflorals, the process can take 3 years or more. Most of the other types of Paphs are a little quicker but none of them are exactly jackrabbits.

[Dalachin]

Thanks for the explanation, I’ve never understood the difference between those terms.

Lovely all the same!

[Roberta]

Sorry... I had edited this into your post accidentally. (Mods can do that, I indended to quote)

Here's the text where it belongs:

Just a note about grex vs cultivar... while there have been attempts, I don't think that anybody has reliably managed to clone Paphs. So generally, it's pretty safe to say that they only way to reproduce a particular cultivar is by division. (So likely to be really expensive if it is an awarded one) All of the rest are the result of seed cultivation, with the potential variation which that implies.

[dbarron]

Lol, I *noticed* that when I saw you had put words into my mouth. Yes, paphs can be divided (but yeah not commercially feasible due to slow growth rates...and thus expensive). I bet one day pretty soon, they'll figure out how to clone them. The good news is that they generally come out fairly true from seed (not identical and surprises are certainly possible of course), I guess much like many human families look similar (the family resemblance/look).

One characteristic I was looking for was heavy spotting...and I got really lucky with that I think.

[Roberta]

So far, Paphs and Phrags have been resistant to cloning. I leave it to other to explain why. Other orchids have been getting cloned since the 1960's, maybe earlier. (That's why you can get even some very old awarded Catt hybrid cultivars) So clearly the slipper orchids have some significant differences.