Vanda bensonii or not ??

[Roy]

I bought this vanda last year and by the description and trophy it had just one at a show I believed the name to be correct. Just wondering if it is.

[Triffid]

Not sure, but this link may help a little.
Vanda bensonii - Orchids Wiki

It could potentially be a cultivar or variant, but don't quote me on that

[Angurek]

It looks more like V. tricolor, or a hybrid thereof. V. bensonii has a different lip and tesselate markings.

[trdyl]

It does look more like tricolor.

[Roy]

Correct on the V. tricolor, pics and notes posted elsewhere confirm this. One other name was suggested but I know this plant as it belongs to a friend of mine who also got this plant for me. The previous owner of my plant and my friend bought these plants as seedlings years ago, together.

[rastafouni]

Hi Roy,

I am sure it is not a Vanda bensonii. I have a few of those as it is a Thai specie not so difficult to find around here.

The lip of V. bensonii is kidney shaped at the apex. The color of it can be dark to light pink. But the kidney shaped is definitely a characteristic to identify this specie. The petals/sepals don't have a spatula shape as your flower does. The base of the column on your flower is clearly trilobed too, a specificity of Deltoglossa section, V. bensonii is not in that section.
Here a pict where you can see the lip and column :

[Roy]

Thanks Philippe, cerainly not bensonii. Tricolor seems to fit the bill most accurately.
All I need to do is find a genuine bensonii now.

[Psyched]

This is a tough one but I don't think that this is a Vanda tricolor nor bensonii. First thing that crossed my mind that this look very much a Vanda limbata hybrid. Maybe it is also a tricolor x bensonii cross. Perhaps you can put the flower next to a ruler to see how big the flower really is. We can start from there.

[Roy]

Psyched, the flowers are exacxtly 40mm across. There is 9 on the spike. It had 12 on each of the previous spikes (3) last year, at previous owners place.

[Psyched]

Originally Posted by Roy

Psyched, the flowers are exacxtly 40mm across. There is 9 on the spike. It had 12 on each of the previous spikes (3) last year, at previous owners place.

Yup not Vanda tricolor definitely. They are bigger than 4 cm across.

It could be one of below:
- Vanda tricolor x limbata (in a very rare situation, they exist in the wild as natural hybrid)
- Vanda tricolor x bensonii = Vanda Maurine Dalton

Really sorry I couldn't help much because I don't have any illustration of the orchids above which could be matched to your orchid.

Hope this might narrow down the possibilities.