I Think My Paph is Scented!

[NYCorchidman]

oops, I meant flowers usually do NOT start to give off scent for the first few days.

Then the scent decline as flowers age, and usually go away when flowers near the end of their life.

Well, looks like you'll have to wait for the next bloom for the party. lol

Are you sure there's no other fragrant flowers near this particular paph?? :P

[Rowangreen]

The flower is now very faded. What's totally wierd is that yesterday it had a flush of strong scent! At the time the petals had turned distinctly yellow, pouch faded and with brown patches. The smell was lovely, sort of like one I've smelt before, off a ceologyne I think! Still not really strong, but I think anyone would have been able to smell it.

Wierd as I agree generally flowers lose their scent as they fade. This one is now distictly worse for wear (generally faded and the pouch has brown patches that look totally dead). It still has a faint scent.

The staminoid etc still look good, so I'm wondering if signs are good that it has fertilized? And maybe the flush of scent was a 'last chance' thing to get more pollen?

I also did wonder if the scent has partly been due to the pouch being a bit damaged: it's had a crack all along, and of course is now fading. But the scent really isn't what you'd expect from that.

[Rowangreen]

Scent persisted until the flower was mostly brown and dried. At that point the staminoid etc were still plump and healthy. Just the last couple of days the staminoid has started to show signs of wear, and the scent has gone. Ovary is still firm: guess it will be a few days before I know if that's going to shrivel with the flower.

Once the back of the flower was going brown rather than white, I also noticed something else... baby mealies! Grrrrrrr.... I've only just got rid of some on a dendrobium, this has been nowhere near that plant and I can't find any other plants with them so I think odds on it came with eggs. For some reason the whole plant now smells rather pleasantly of washing up liquid and cinnamon...

[Rowangreen]

Flower now dropped. Ovary is still very much unshrivelled, so I'm hopeful. It's also had it's second mealie treatment, so hope that won't knock it back too much.

[orchidsarefun]

a tip - if you find something that is unusual as in this case, you should try and self-pollinate the flower. If you can't grow out the seedlings for whatever reason, I am sure that somebody will oblige !

[Rowangreen]

Erm... I posted that the flower had dropped but the ovary is firm as I have selfed it.... I have sort of mentioned it several times in the thread LOL

Are you interested in a some then? I'm in the UK so probably not happening unless someone wants to pay to import a flask! I'm hoping there will be a few people in Europe interested. That's assuming it has fertilized of course! I believe I won't know for sure for a few months yet.

[orchidsarefun]

I'm sorry ! I went back and re-read the whole thread. Guess I forgot about it as the fragrance theme stuck in my brain. You have mentioned the selfing a few times.
In the USA, Troy Meyers will flask up species for free providing you meet certain criteria. I don't know if he would take a pod from overseas though.
Maybe he can tell you if there are people who do similar things in the UK area if you can't work something out with him.
Hopefully you do get a pod with viable seed.

[Rowangreen]

Lol we've all done it!

I'm sort of thinking that sending pods would meet with the same restrictions and fees as whole orchids? It would certainly be a pain/expensive to get the seedlings back. Whereas orchids can be shipped freely within Europe.

There are a few places over here do flasking. I'm also getting tempted to try myself. In any case I'll certainly be interested in getting seedlings to those who want some. Down in the project forum the idea of a 'from flask' project has come up, so it would be great if this could be it. Though of course I hope people wouldn't be too disapointed if the plants turned out not to be well scented!

I'm thinking if there are a few people in the States wanted to try then sending a flask to be divided there might be the most cost-effective way. But again, seems a lot of trouble if it turns out my plant isn't unusual!

All well in the future yet though! Long way to go...

[Rowangreen]

Right, update on this...

Today I got to smell a spicerianum hybrid (the guy got it sold him as a spicerianum, but the flower is close but not quite right for a purebred). And guess what, I detected a light scent... several other people also smelt it, most of whom also detected a light scent. One guy dismissed it as 'green orchid scent' and 'they aren't scented'. Hmmm, in my book if the flower smells different to the leaves then it's a scented orchid!

Of course this was a hybrid, so there's the chance the scent came from the cross. And Silken didn't detect a scent from her spicey. I guess nothing definitive yet, but it is looking like spicerianum might be a slightly scented species, to some people at least! Which makes it less likely my plant is unusual of course.

Anyway, I've not cut off the pod in disgust yet... it's unchanged so far but I think I read it's several months before any swelling happens. It's not shrivelled so that's good so far.

[Rowangreen]

PS: for anyone who's interested this is the plant I sniffed. It was sold at auction today. Seeing it in real life the flowers were very similar to spicerianum, but appeared more delicate.

The UK Orchid Forum - with resources for the EU • View topic - A little disappointment...