bulbophyllum confusion

[santiago]

a friend of mine just bought a "bulbophyllum pulchrum", this species belongs to the cirrhopetalum group, and normally looks like this



but...
he says that it doesn't look like that at all. he was looking pictures in google, and found this:



also as b. pulchrum as you can see, but very different to the first picture,and probably mislabeled. and he says that is very similar to what he bought.

so ovbiously, what he bought isn't b. pulchrum, but what is it then?

---------- Post added at 10:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:44 PM ----------

there is no photo of the actual plant yet, but i will show it tomorrow

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Try looking up Hapalochilus pulchrum, instead of "Bulbophyllum pulchrum".

The first pic you posted would now be considered Cirrhopetalum pulchrum, not "Bulbophyllum pulchrum" anymore.

[goodgollymissmolly]

There are no plants in genus Cirrhopetalum. They are all Bulbophyllum.

The plant shown above (from Jay Phal site) as Cirrhopetalum pulchrum is Bulbophyllum longiflorum Thouars, Hist. Orchid.: t. 98 (1822). It has a long list of both homotypic and heterotypic synonyms including Cirrhopetalum pulchrum and Cirrhopetalum longiflorum.

I don't know off hand what the "mystery" plant shown above is. There is a whole set of similar Bulbos. One of the most common is Bulbophyllum septemtrionale (J.J.Sm.) J.J.Sm., Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 12: 122 (1913).

When a better picture is available maybe you can ID the plant as septemtrionale or one of the similar species.

Bulb septemtrionale JCL_0086 by kentucky4, on Flickr

[santiago]

thank you both. i still haven't seen the photos, so i know as much about you about it.
but for what i can see, genus hapalochilus and cirrhopetalum doesn't exist anymore. all hapalochlus were moved to bulbo. sect. codonosiphon
and i think that's where the plant is. we'll see when the photos are uploaded

[isurus79]

I'm not sure of the exact species, but it looks like it is one of the Bulbos in the section Codonosiphon. When I saw your pic, I immediately thought of B. nitidum, though I don't think this is the correct species.