Vanda coerulea?

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Of course, there's always the option of buying from Andy's. It's guaranteed to be a species. His stock is mostly species and a negligible amount of natural hybrids.

[goodgollymissmolly]

There may be cause for your concern. In David Groves book, Vandas and Ascocendas, he says:

The lip of V coerulea is dark purple. Each side lobe terminates in a needle-sharp, backward-curving hook (plate 17). This feature is very useful for distinguishing a flower of the pure species from that of a closely related hybrid; the hook becomes shorter and blunter........in hybrids that in other respects resemble V. coerulea.

He shows a pic of the side lobe and it is more curved and noticeably sharper than your rounded tip. Also interesting is the fact that V. coerulea petals are notorious for turning face skyward. Yours actually droop face downward. That might just be the condition of the flowers since I expect you just got the plant in the mail. I do think you have a legitimate question on the hook.

[PaphMadMan]

Goodgollymissmolly makes some valid points, but here's the flip side...

The highly selected forms of the species, which certainly do exist, are selected specifically to not be like typical members of the species. They are bigger, broader, flatter, rounder, etc. The lack of the characteristic skyward turn to the petals is exactly what you would expect if the selection process was successful. And selection for bigger, broader, flatter, rounder petals and sepals on the flower is likely to influence other parts of the plant too, making other flower structures and even leaves bigger, broader, flatter, rounder too. With a species as significant as Vanda coerulea this process has been going on for perhaps dozens of generations.

At the same time the natural selective pressures that gave the sharp curving hook, whatever its function, have been removed. It might come out much different than the natural species in that characteristic and many others. It might very well be different enough that it would not be recognized as the same species if you rely on a few discrete physical aspects.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by PaphMadMan

...the sharp curving hook, whatever its function...

I think the function has something to do with holding or guiding the pollinator into the column for pollination purposes.

[wonderlen3000]

My V. coerulea's 'hook' is a lot shaper and curved back to the flower. All the line breeded coerulea that I had seen in orchids show and Thailand have petal twisted back to more or less degree. My coerulea's petal twisted back to about 270'degree, even the clone is line breeded.

Another thing is most pure coerulea, when the flower open started out as almost white and grdually increase their color. Another trick is, remove the pollen from mature flower, and the flower should turn to complete white less than 24 hr. Most hybrid tend to retian the blue color a lot longer and wouldn't drastically noticeble until third day or so.

[smweaver]

Originally Posted by elitebettas

There is no way to tell if it is definitively or not. It looks like it to me, especially because of the wide windows it has. As the flowers mature, do the petals reflex a bit?

They've not really reflexed all that much.

[smweaver]

Originally Posted by wonderlen3000

My V. coerulea's 'hook' is a lot shaper and curved back to the flower. All the line breeded coerulea that I had seen in orchids show and Thailand have petal twisted back to more or less degree. My coerulea's petal twisted back to about 270'degree, even the clone is line breeded.

Another thing is most pure coerulea, when the flower open started out as almost white and grdually increase their color. Another trick is, remove the pollen from mature flower, and the flower should turn to complete white less than 24 hr. Most hybrid tend to retian the blue color a lot longer and wouldn't drastically noticeble until third day or so.

Actually, the blooms did open an alarmingly white color. At first I thought there was a problem with them, or maybe I had gotten a white-flowered hybrid. Over the course of a few days the blue tessellation appeared (it was especially prominent on the reverse side of the flowers before appearing on the front). I'll remove the pollinia from the oldest bloom to see what affect that has (if any) on the flower color. Thank you for that tip!

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by wonderlen3000

Another thing is most pure coerulea, when the flower open started out as almost white and grdually increase their color. Another trick is, remove the pollen from mature flower, and the flower should turn to complete white less than 24 hr. Most hybrid tend to retian the blue color a lot longer and wouldn't drastically noticeble until third day or so.

Noted!

Thank you!

Interesting way of testing out the plant.

Thanks again.

[rastafouni]

Very beautiful Steve !!

In my opinion, it is a "real" Vanda coeruela.

[Tindomul]

Beautiful colours!