Full Lable on this Orchid
 

Hello everyone,

I have a problem I hope you can help me with and this seemed like the best place on the forum.

I have an orchid I divided last April. I could have sworn I put the tag into one of the pots and was planning to make a copy for the other pot. When I got around to doing it, I couldn't find the tag in the first pot.

The name on the tag was Miltassia Shelob 'The Weed'. This orchid was sold by Better-gro or more specifically, growers for sun-bulb nursery. I did manage to contact them and even found the original label on the orchid since it was the first one I ever got years ago. They said that the orchid on the picture was Miltassia Olmec 'Kanno'. He said they sent out Miltassia Shelob under the same tag, though.

When I search for Miltassia Shelob 'The Weed', the only things that pop-up in the search are Shelob 'Tolkien', Shelob 'Red Spider', and posts where I've asked various questions about it in the past. That's why I wonder if it's even a real registered cultivar or if they just made up their on name and slapped awards from another Shelob onto the tag.

I know what the name on the tag said, but I know it had other stuff I think there was an AM/AOS on there, but I could be miss remembering. Can anyone tell me if 'The Weed' is a registered cultivar or if it's just something they made up? It seems that they wouldn't be able to add that unless that specific plant had won an award. Also, can you tell me what else should go on the tag, besides the name I know?

Lastly, can you tell me the difference between Olmec 'Kanno' and Shelob 'The Weed' so I can make sure mine wasn't mislabeled?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide to enlighten me on this one.

First, thanks to taxonomists, the current hybrid genus for the plant is bratonia.

Cultivars, per se, are not registered. When a plant gets awarded, it must be assigned a cultivar name, so that becomes part of the award documentation, but it is not truly "registered" as the grex name is.

If you have a cultivar that does not already have a name, you may assign one yourself.

I looked in OrchidWiz, and found no awarded Bratonia Shelob with "Weed" in its cultivar name.

Bratonia Shelob is a cross between Bratonia Olmec and Brassia Edvah Loo.

I think Ray covered it. Bratonia Shelob 'The Weed' is a perfectly legitimate name that was probably chosen for a vigorous cultivar when someone decided to clone it, but such a name would never be registered in any way, and only officially recognized if it was awarded. But it has not been awarded. Perhaps an awarded parent was listed on the tag?

Since Bratonia Olmec is a parent of Bratonia Shelob they are virtually impossible to tell apart unless specific clones can be compared. Bratonia Olmec 'Kanno' HCC/AOS is well known, but looks even more like Shelob than most, and we don't know what 'The Weed' looks like. If you have a good picture of your plant's flower I can probably be pretty certain if it matches 'Kanno' or not, and apparently it should be Shelob if it doesn't.