Phal. Amber (?)

[PaphLover]

Got this one October 2016, in flower, and this is the first rebloom for me.





The flowers were all floppy and sad from transport when I purchased it (though the plant was healthy), so it's nice to see it bloom glossy and flat.

2016


Not sure about the name...if it's completely accurate. Other tags from this vendor have been missing some info. Can't seem to find a similar bloom online.

The leaves and inflorescence are quite dark and thick.

[jkofferdahl]

A name isn't all that important. It's a beauty! Is there a fragrance? It looks to have lueddemanniana in it, and these can breed out with a scent.

[estación seca]

What a beautiful flower!

[fishmom]

The textured color is beautiful.

[PaphLover]

Originally Posted by jkofferdahl

A name isn't all that important. It's a beauty! Is there a fragrance? It looks to have lueddemanniana in it, and these can breed out with a scent.

No scent that I can detect yet, though it's been rainy here (surprise, surprise) and sometimes I find scent only comes out with the warmth of the sun.

Still can't quite get over one of my other phals in bloom, Phal. Yaphon Sensation x Brother Ambo Passion, having an artificial bacon smell. That one's weird. I guess its natural pollinators are humans? But who eats bacon with a toothpick?

[estación seca]

The fragrance of hybrid orchids is a perfect example of a characteristic that is not under selection pressure.

Species evolved fragrances to attract pollinators. Individuals whose fragrances attracted better or more pollinators had more progeny over time, and passed those fragrances on to their progeny. Biologists say that a characteristic potentially helping a living thing to reproduce is "under selection pressure."

Hybrids were made by people, between and among species that only cross in the wild rarely, if at all. Humans don't usually hybridize for fragrance. When fragrance genes from varying species combine and assort you can get all sorts of fragrances that wouldn't attract anything in the wild. Such plants probably wouldn't reproduce much in the wild. But, since humans hybridize for flower appearance, even something that wouldn't reproduce in the wild can pass on its genes to many other plants.

The word "selection" in the phrase "natural selection" is somewhat unfortunate, but there's no better word in English. Most English speakers will subconsciously assume selection involves an intelligence doing the selection. However, this is not necessary. Events and conditions of nature set up an obstacle course for organisms trying to reproduce.

My undergraduate evolutionary biology professor Dr. Harold Koopowitz told us natural selection is not like people picking things out of a box. Rather, it is like spaghetti falling through a colander; only a very few strands are oriented properly to fall through the tiny holes without being stopped.

[PaphLover]

Wow! estación seca, I was being all cheeky/ goofy and you came back with actual useful information. Thanks.

And Dr. Harold Koopowitz was your professor? Double Wow! interesting!

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:36 AM ----------

Originally Posted by jkofferdahl

A name isn't all that important.

Yes, this is true, but if it has a name I'd like to use the right one. I wouldn't like to be called "Betty" if my name was "Lucille".

Maybe PaphMadMan will see this. He's great at IDing plants.

[estación seca]

It is amazing... one of the best professors I ever had, in a course I took during the very first term of my undergraduate years... way back in 1974.