:lol:
John,
Al,
Totally agree with you. Those two guys are very alike. :)

Al, the easiest way is to look at the spike. One that is pendant, such as the one pictured in this thread, is mariae. One with a very erect spike is bastianii.

Wow, thank you so much! See how some simple little thing can solve the mystery! You must have been growing for quite some time. Thanks to you and the others I've learned so much and pick up something new every day.

I have the ah...........errrrrrrr,,,,,,hmmmmm...........the one that grows a spike and branch's much like a mini phal.

Al

I know, bastianii, it was more fun this way. Dorothy that was for you

Hey Al. Been growing Phals for about 30 years. However, this easy difference between mariae and bastianii was pointed out to me about 18 months ago by another OB member.

Well... sorry to write that, but for me it's not a real mariae... it looks more like the hybrid between mariae and bastianii, called Lovely Marie.

The pendant stem is not always a good criteria, as you can have hybrid with a lot of influence of mariae... that have pendant stem... If you look at the lip, a real mariae should have more trichomes on it... but well... it's just my opinion :biggrin:

orchidsworld, there is absolutely nothing to be sorry about. It’s really great that we do have possibility to open discussion. Well, what I can say, I’ve never seen Phalaenopsis Lovely Marie in real, only on the pictures (f.ex. here Phalaenopsis mariae ) and because of it I can’t say anything about ID. May be here there are people who have both Phalaenopsis mariae and Phalaenopsis Lovely Marie and they can help us with ID?
I did found couple of pictures of my plant with better lip details. Here they are.

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2365/p1070470x.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7636/p1020270k.jpg

What do you think?

Well... it's really hard to say... the differences between a real mariae or a Lovely Marie are not so clear, because you can find an hybrid with high influence of mariae, therefore pendant stem, but alos high influence of bastianii, which will give more erected stems...

I personnally have a Lovely Marie, with half erected stems. My mariae has not yet flower yet, but as it is as keiki from this one, I'm sure it's a real one...

But well.. I'm not convinced yours is a mariae, but I'm not convinced either it's not one :hmm

Not sure if comparing these two links from same sight may help.
It's information seems pretty good.

phalaenopsis bastiani

Phalaenopsis mariae

(Interested because bastiani is on the wish list)

The problem is that the major part of mariae sold in EUropa are in facts Lovely Marie, with more of less influence of mariae... It's quite hard to find real mariae in Europa...

Well, of cause, there is a possibility for Lovely Marie to have bigger influence from mariae and than, your suggestion is correct. But, there is a but! :) We can’t forget about individual variations between the individual plants inside the species, can we?
As I know, my plant is from Thailand but I have no idea from which vendor exactly.