Scented Westerlay Darling Phalaenopsis
 

I’m a sucker for scented Phalaenopsis. Even though it’s a NOID I picked up this little yellow Westerlay Darling. It has a really pleasant lemon scent and nice mottled leaves. It might be worth keeping an eye out for :-)

Interesting website....but looks like they don't mail

Our Store – Westerlay Orchids

Interesting. I didn’t know phals ever had scent. Are scented phals common?

Lovely lemon yellow. Btw.

Yes and no. There are a number of scented species, and a lot of the Phals marketed as novelty Phals also have a scent (some quite strong) due to scented species in their ancestry. But, most of the complex hybrids available at grocery and hardware stores are not scented.

My scented hybrid Phals all tend to only release scent in the morning under warm conditions. This can make them easy to miss in an air conditioned store. The Westerlay Darlings are pretty common in a lot of California grocery stores, but I don't know how detectable scent will be under a lot of store conditions. I'm always sniffing the orchids and have a weakness for yellow Phals and Phals with patterned leaves so this one was an all around winner.

A large portion of Phalaenopsis species are fragrant. In some species, it varies from plant to plant as to whether or not there's human detectable fragrance. Other species are only fragrant at certain times of day for a short period of time. There's also quite a range of strengths, from faint to room filling. And there's lots of variation in the scents themselves including pleasant floral to citrus, grape, and even burned plastic or smoked meat.

However, traditional breeding that's produced the bulk of our standard Phalaenopsis hybrids, such as the types that are mass produced and available in national chains, have focused on flower appearance with little to no regard to fragrance. So, right now almost none of the commonly available standard Phals are fragrant. So it's completely understandable that folks would not realize there are fragrant Phalaenopsis.

Every once in awhile, though, a fragrant one slips in. In my experience, it seems like the yellow ones with smaller flowers are slightly more likely to be fragrant. That's because species that most commonly are used to get yellow pigment into the flowers (such as P. venosa and P. amboinensis) are fragrant. It helps if they're in good natural lighting in a warm area and you're there around mid morning to early afternoon. Sometimes the miniature Phals with lighter color pinkish flowers are fragrant as well. The ones that are least likely to be fragrant are the ones with large flowers that are predominantly purple or white.

The best bet, if you're interested in fragrant Phals, is to purchase from specialty commercial growers. They'll have tons of options like Phal. violacea, Phal. bellina, and their hybrids. There are also species like Phal. schilleriana that can give you a more traditional standard appearance as well as a nice scent. While most of the strongly scented Phals tend to have small, star-shaped flowers, there are also efforts to produce larger standard Phals with fragrance. Those are probably a little trickier to find.