A few years ago when I used to sell a few orchids for pocket money, I got to know a British grower of Phalaenopsis in the course of putting a little business her way. As I only wanted a small order (smaller than the minimum for her to deliver) of only a few trays of Plants, I went to pick my own plants from her nursery, which is great for me because I could pick a tray of all one variety. This nursery
imported young plants from the far East and grew them on to sell as British grown. I had no idea at the time, but the vast majority of her plants did in fact have names and it was only a matter of me selecting the plants I wanted and she could find the name for me. I have sold the majority of the plants, but the few that remain are mostly named. There was a big advantage to these British plants too, which is that they had been grown at lower temperatures than their Dutch counterparts, so the plants were stockier and much stronger than their Dutch counterparts.
All this was back in 2012/13, and here we are in early 2016 and the plants are still growing strong. I'll lead in with a pretty picture and then explain about that particular plant.
These are quite large flowers, probably the largest of any of my Phalaenopsis and are very nicely shaped. I have several plants of this hybrid, and although the purple spotting is very sparse on this particular plant, some of the others are more prominent, though never overbearing. I have been told that these so called 'harlequin' Phalaenopsis are unstable in some way, but I've never figured out how. I do know that the markings are slightly different on each flower, and each plant produces flowers with slightly different markings to the other plants. However, I have looked in detail at many of my other orchids, and I don't believe that any of them produce flowers that are exactly identical. At any rate, this one is particularly subtly marked, with most of the purple spots actually being on the two dorsal sepals that you can't really see. This particular plant has only produced three flowers, as can be seen on the next photo, and I'll explain why in due course.
This plant had a bit of a crisis not long after I got it, and developed crown rot. As any grower of Phalaenopsis will tell you, this is usually curtains for the plant concerned, but I have actually had two plants that contracted crown rot, and both have survived and grown on fine. In this case, the crown rot was not obvious at all and must have happened while the emerging leaf was still very small indeed. The only outward sign was that the plant showed no signs of growth for some considerable time. I decided to keep it and see what it did, and eventually it produced a new growth from the base. It actually bloomed for the first time last year, with only one bloom on the stem (still a large flower for the size of plant). This year, the plant has produce three flowers which, while still not a great quantity, is three times more than last year so I call that good progress. Crown rot is usually a side effect of overhead watering and cool overnight temperatures. Water lodges in the crown of the plant and allows bacteria to attack the plant, mostly during cool nights. In my growroom, this is never a problem since the nights stay warm. Quite often if the spread of the rot can be arrested, the plant will eventually recover, though mostly plants are thrown away.
Phalaenopsis 'Spottion' is slightly harder to get to bloom than many other hybrids. Quite often the others will put out a spike at any random time of year but not so with this one. This plant, and the other 'Spottion' only initiate spikes after a four week period with slightly cooler temperatures. For practical reasons in my growroom, this usually means that the plants all bloom at the same time, at around this time of the year. This also goes some way to explaining why there are more hybrid Phalaenopsis left in my collection than I would really like. Firstly, I really dislike sending out blooming plants during winter as the transport during cold nights usually results in buds aborting, and this hybrid is also apparently not one for branching. Secondly, it is exceedingly difficult to sell a Phalaenopsis that isn't in bloom or spike. After all, you can go to the supermarket and pick up a Phalaenopsis in bloom for a fiver, and there is no way I can afford to sell a plant that cheaply. Interestingly, although this isn't one for branching, if old stems are left on the plant, they will stay alive until the next blooming cycle (after that four week cooling period) and then produce a second flush of buds. Who said plants didn't have personalities?
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