Phal. Lyndon Equator Jewel

Phal Lyndon Equator Jewel dropped almost all its buds from two spikes. I don't really know why it happened, but I already had two more phals that wilted one of the buds on the spike. The conditions in the tanks seem to be perfect for them so I have no clue what went wrong there.
Anyway, Lyndon Equator Jewel managed to keep one bud and opened it yesterday:



The colors are more bright then the last blooming, but shape is somewhat different. It looks more like the second plant of this cross that I have. Also the flowers seem much smaller than the blooms on the second plant.

It still does look pretty, hopefully next blooming all the buds will survive...

An awesome bloom coming soon

The bud on Bl. Morning Glory has grown a lot and became dark pink.
I think it is about ready to open:



I wonder how long until the flower opens up. Really can't wait...

Phal. Gelblieber x cochlearis

Cross of Gelblieber and cochlearis is a new plant from Kingfishers Orchids:



The picture of the flower example is here, but of course being a seed population they can be very different between each other.
I just hope that mine will have similar lip.

Phal. Chang Maw Evergreen 'U-Bix' x P. {Tzu Chiang Litlitz x P. (Buena Jewel x Peach State Red)} x P. (Su-An Super Star x George Vasquez)

Shortly after dropping a flower on the first spike, second spike got ready to bloom on Phal. Chang Maw Evergreen 'U-Bix' x P. {Tzu Chiang Litlitz x P. (Buena Jewel x Peach State Red)} x P. (Su-An Super Star x George Vasquez) :



I know, the shape is not great, but I really like the color, texture, fragrance and large size of blooms.



For some reason blooms always look down on this plant. Spikes are too short for clip yet, so it is a challenge to make a picture.



There is one more bud growing on the same spike:

Phal. LD's Bear Queen seedlings

I received my shipment from Kingfishers and there was a flask with LDBQ. They could stay in the flask by the size but I noticed that medium was quite dry and crumbly, and roots of the plantlets were silvery grey, not green, so I decided to deflask right away.

Here is the result:



There are 25 seedlings in total. I kept them in the warm water for a while hoping that silvery grey roots will turn green, but some of them stayed grey still. Hopefully the new roots will start growing soon...

Deflasked seedlings update

Phalaenopsis Hawaii Dragon Girl grows much faster, but they were also larger sized when I took them out of flask. Unfortunately I lost two of my "pick-of-the-litter" from this batch to some kind of rot. The edges of the leaves got watery, see-through, I freaked out and threw them away.
Here is what's left:



There are still too many for my limited space, so I am planning to leave 15 largest ones for myself (back two rows), and get rid of the 5 compots at the front. Two of them (with larger seedlings) are already spoken for. The other three might have too small seedlings, so maybe I should just throw them away. I don't know if they are worth the space, even though I can see them growing.

Phal. Bedfrod Nonpareil seedlings are much slower.



I am thinking of throwing away two compots in clay pots that were just protocorms without any roots when I deflasked and being newb - potted them too. Now I know that too small ones might as well be eliminated at the beginning.

Phal. gigantea

Something is going on with gigantea seedling. Two bottom leaves are getting yellow and will drop soon:



Usually when a bottom leaf is dying like that I don't worry because it seems like a normal process, but when there are two leaves doing it simultaneously - I am not sure anymore.
The roots are fine and bottom part of the stem looks green and healthy.



There will still be three more green leaves when the two yellow ones will drop, hope it is enough for now...

Happy roots

I was watering paphs yesterday and noticed these two happy roots chasing each other in the bark. I couldn't help it and snapped the picture:



Guess, who they belong to?...

Paphiopedilum Delrosi 'Murray'. Despite last years repeated mites attack, it is still alive and growing. I think it enjoys being in the orchid tank:



I repotted it recently changing medium from chc in clay pot to bark mix in plastic. It seems to like new mix...

Phalaenopsis fasciata 'Shaffers'

Multiple old spikes on fasciata 'Shaffers' started to look yellowish and rough, so I decided to cut them off and repot the plant.
Two new spikes that I discovered last winter turned into basal keikis, so cutting off the old spikes might also help the plant to grow the keikis faster.
Unpotted it showed some new roots grown:



Potted into fresh moss:



I think it might look spectacular with three crowns when they all will be ready to bloom...

Phalaenopsis Vio Vio repotted

Phalaenopsis Vio Vio grew into large plant with lots of roots and was uncomfortably hanging over the edge of its clay pot. The roots were going up and on the sides from the pot and I was trying really hard to keep them from breaking every watering. Finally I decided to move it to a larger pot.
Unpotted:



Moved to a 5 inch clear plastic pot with slits:



I used Shultz bark mix - the only bark option we have here. It is fine but needs to be washed through to remove all the dirt out.
I wonder if the bud will drop after all these manipulations...

Phal. Ho's Lovely Amethyst bloomed

Phal. Ho's Lovely Amethyst came with two buds, but they promptly dropped as soon as I brought it home.
Very soon plant started to grow new bud and here it is open now:



Flower is thick and waxy with velvety texture and has strong pleasant fragrance.



Plant has lovely foliage with red tinge around the edge of the leaves:



If anybody interested in parentage and descendants of this cross, you can find it here:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/H/Ho-s-Lovely-Amethyst-id%3d4e11e934-e2c2-43ea-8997-558b95e7ef68

Yet another new spike...

This is Phalaenopsis violacea 'Orchis 01', one of the two violaceas that I got in preorder from Orchis Floriculturing:



In the catalogue on their website here (I couldn't get the link to particular page of the catalogue, so you would need to go to Phalaenopsis and related varieties green, yellow and orange), it looks extremely similar to bellina, that's why I ordered it. I thought maybe the label comes from the days when bellina was violacea var. borneo.
However when the plant came - the leaves were not very round as one would expect from bellina and now I am not sure what it is going to be. So, I was quite excited to discover a spike:

Getting me some more plants...

The long waited catalogue from Kingfishers arrived yesterday and the selection was so great that I couldn't keep the promise to not order anymore plants this season. It was really hard to choose and stay in the limits of reasonal plant spendings.
Here is what I am getting:
Phal. bellina ‘Chen’ because... well, it is bellina - that's why;
Phal. Corning Ambo because I really like the wildish shape of corningiana blooms and hope to see it in this cross, plus the fragrance of course;
Phal. gigantea X P. LD’s Bear King since I already have gigantea x LD's Bear Queen - getting a King was only logical;
Phal. Gelblieber X P. cochlearis - I couldn't find any pics of this cross but think it should be interesting and hope that it will take wonderfully patterned lip of cochlearis.
I am also getting a flask of Phal. LD’s Bear Queen - cross of DTE and bellina.
Now, to patiently wait for them to arrive...

Phal. Tsay's Evergreen

Actualy one from the two Tsay's Evergreen phals I had, that is still alive and growing. They both suffered severe root rot and then the leaves were burned under the T5 HO fixture at the beginning of my experimenting with tank lighting. The second plant looked too bad and was let go. Now I think the remaining one got scared and tries to show me that he is worth keeping. Look at all those roots:



And there is a new spike:



The leaves on the left show the burned patches, that's the side that was exposed to strong light. I hope spike doesn't stop growing...

Bl. Morning Glory

In my previous post about Bl.Morning Glory in March I mentioned that it is probably very close to become a blooming sized plant. Well, I was totally right, because one of the two newest pseudobulbs produced this:



From my very small experience with catts in general, I know it is a bud growing:



It looks very similar to the claw looking bud of B. Little Stars (long gone by now) and I am very curious about the flower. Whatever I saw on the web, looked pretty awsome...

Phal. Lyndon Equator Jewel II with more blooms:

The buds continue to open on Lyndon Equator Jewel II and here it is now:



It seems to be much more colorful and bright comparing to the number one plant of this cross that I have. I hope it is just an influence of hot and humid orchid tank conditions and when the "number one" will be ready to bloom - its flowers will be just as colorful.



I really like the color combination on this hybrid.

Charts update and new spike discovered

First about the spike:
It is growing on Phal Samera which was sitting doing nothing for over a year, so I am quite excited about this spike and hope it successfully grows up to the blooming time:



Now charts. I have fixed the calculation problem for the phals that have missing parent somewhere in the family tree. In such cases chart will not be generated at all, which is better than showing wrong data. It is reloading now, about half-way through(takes a while because of recursive nature of the calculations)...
Whatever is done already looks fine.

I have added text that includes full list of the species breakdown, even those that got into "Other" bucket on the chart. For example:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/G/Gan-Lin-Fairy-id%3def2bc2de-6ff2-40cf-8c60-4533f5c01949
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/P/Pingtung-Gold-id%3d0e646803-8b22-4777-bc8f-848f3bc351a1

Phalaenopsis parentage info

I am trying to figure out the exact information on both seed and pollen parents of the following phalaenopsis hybrids:
Dawn Flower
La Catillon
Laura Galto
Twin Vision
Ann Thorne
Anthura Manchester
Bo-Liu Rod Art
Shou Shan
Tinny Moonlight
Tonjy Gold
Camanek
El Prado
Fire Music
Golden Valley
Hybrid Ignota
Ivory Pearl
Lady Valentine
Lavender
Lee Huei Rose
Luchia Smile
Malang Jaya
P. A. Benson
Redland Spots
If anybody has any info on them, please let me know in the comments.
Yes, I tried the orchid register website, no success.

My phalaenopsis reference project

I have added a new feature to my "project" - the chart with ancestry which shows the species breakdown. It was exciting to work on it because I got to use Microsoft .NET chart control which I like but don't get to use very often.
Now this chart sort of makes the plants pages without pictures to look more alive.
I spent quite a time to create a custom palette for the chart because all default ones were too colorful and I wanted it to blend in with overall design of the site.
At the beginning I had all the species to come up but when there were too many with small value - the labels became too squishy and overlapping, so I had to add "Other" slice to collect all of the species with smallish values.
Now I am thinking that I should probably add some table that will have full list of the species and their values, even the smallest ones.
So, still work-in-progress, but already kind of useable:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/B/Brother-Passion-id%3d3c4080b8-1fc8-47e0-9bd8-e9e840370f6b
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/B/Brother-Sara-Gold-id%3dbc56913e-9153-4b4e-bf4a-ce7671be8c29
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/S/Sogo-Gold-id%3df019b899-dc39-4346-af26-005eac33645d
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/T/Tristar-Snow-Princess-id%3db5866a70-cc03-4229-ba62-fee646df2463
Or any other hybrid for that matter.
Looks ok? Any suggestions?