No seller description, nothing found online - mystery Neos
 

Note: This is a re-post. The entire original thread vanished inexplicably while I was typing a response to Hakumin's very thorough reply to the original post. Hakumin's reply is included at the end of the OP, below.

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I've got a few of these Mystery Neos. I thought I'd share three of them on the outside chance I'll learn something new. :) I'd also like to see the mystery Neos others have in their collections. Here they are in the order of increasing mystery.

#1 N. falcata Tenshou 天祥 - Online translators give the translation as Tianxiang. Wen Tianxiang (文天祥) was a Taiwanese(?) Song Dynasty hero.

The plant pictured is large 5.75" (14.5cm) with thick, wide exceedingly dark green himeba (gracefully arced) leaves. On my plant, the variegation is light green on a very dark green base color. The pattern is imahaze nochikurami chirifujima, which means scattered spread stripes that darken to green as the leaf ages. It has a crescent tsuke, and green roots. There is no indication this growth has flowered previous. The seller said the origin is unknown.

An expired New World Orchids listing portrays a very different Tenshou. They say "Neofinetia falcata Tenshou has a lovely peacock orientation to the leaves, but its most interesting feature is the flowers: white with an elephant trunk-like spur sticking out of the front!" This Tenshou doesn't appear to resemble mine at all.

There are Tenshou photos at Neofinetia.com.ua which look very similar to mine.
Neofinetia falcata Tenshou 天祥

On the other hand, there are Tenshou photos at flickriver.com with no variegation showing and very thin straight leaves. This could be the same as the one at NWO.
Flickriver: Photoset 'Neofinetia Falcata' by Mdmiranda88

#2 N. falcata Houraizan 蓬莱山 - Online translators yield "Penglai", the name of a mythical mountain. The seller's description said it was formerly named Shinwa.

This is a very large Neofinetia, measuring 10" leaf tip to leaf tip as it stands, 12" if the leaves were straight. New leaves increase in length by about 1" per month, which is very fast for a Neofinetia, but the leaves are so long it stacks them up at a normal rate. It has himeba (gracefully arched) leaves that occasional have a fine white chirifushima (scattered) stripe

If the stripes were to become much greater in number, this would be a spectacular Neofinetia. It has a crescent tsuike, mud stem, and green root tips. It is currently spiking, but I have not yet seen it bloom.

#3 N. falcata Okina Nishiki 翁錦 The name auto-translates as "Weng brocade", with "brocade"indicating shima stripes. "Weng" may be the Chinese district name taken as a surname by the descendants of the fourth king of the Zhou dynasty. On the other hand, "Okina" suggests (to my Western thinking) possible Okinawan origins, where my oldest son lived as a foreign exchange student.

My very thorough research found no mention of this cultivar or clues as to its desirable attributes. The seller did not provide a description and it is not registered by the Japanese or Koreans. I bought it because it I think it is possible that a well-grown N. Okina Nishiki could have a very elegant appearance with nicely stacked highly arched leaves that turn up at the tips. It could also develop My plant has no stripes.

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The following is Hakumin's excellent reply.

So, I found out that I had seen Okina-Nishiki before in Seed Engei's old email lists and ebay listings. Looking back at the last listing and given that there was no information given about the variety there, I'm not sure that I'll be able to find any info about it. There is nothing that shows up about it in any Japanese or Korean searches.

I bought it from S-E, so you may found the listing I purchased from.

I have one more I can't find described anywhere. Bangkokmaru 蛮国丸. Is it listed on Pungnan?

How are you searching the Pungnan listings? I have not been able to find a search box. Much of their page text is in pictures, so the translators don't work.

You are far more adventurous in your purchases than I am.

The Neof. Tenshou is absolutely beautiful.

If you're talking about the variety listed on Orchidweb, they miswrote it.

Bankokumaru is written 万国丸. Profile is: here.

Paraphrased: Somewhat narrow and long leaves with a semi-upright, gracefully curved posture. While technically medium sized it has a sense of strength and stature. Yellow-green fukurin variegation that feels like they widen as the leaves mature. The variegation color changes depending on the growing environment.

This is the link to the profile database. The search box is on the bottom right.

However, because Korea uses unsimplified Chinese characters, the search will only pick up the names when written using traditional unsimplified characters. Modern Japanese uses their own set of simplified Chinese characters, and this affects about 10-20% or so of variety names. To search for those in the Korean database you need to replace the simplified characters with traditional ones. (e.g. 青>靑, 国>國, 広>廣, etc.)

On the other hand, to make things easier for English speaking growers, I keep an updated spreadsheet of all the varieties with profiles there with romanizations here:

Neo Variety Profiles on the Korean Association Website - varieties.pdf - Google Drive

The plant photo in the Orchidweb photo you linked to shows the actual plant I own. Thanks for the correction.
You've made my day with this great information with your posts in this thread. I'm a scientist by profession, so data is everything. :)
Ouch! Online translators can give either, but it is not unlike that the multiple translations will fall short.
I found the excel spreadsheet, and I'm very happy.

Who the heck are you that you are so familiar with these languages and have access to all this great data? Wow, you've been a great resource - THANK YOU!

When I started collecting Neos some 12-15 years ago or so, there weren't many Neo collectors in the US, and the choices were few. The only source I knew of was Glen at NWO, now deceased. It was only about 3 months ago that I discovered there are quite a few collectors in the US and several good sources.

K-Sci

I just happen to be able to read Japanese and Korean and have a heavy interest in Neos. It also helps that I help run the Facebook and Reddit groups (both of which are much more active than the Neo section on the OB is now, btw...)

I noticed the facebook and Reddit. Facebook is evil, but I'll check out the reddit.
-K

Yeah...........the one and only reason I'm still on there is the Neo group. I don't use Facebook for anything else at all really, and it's a complicated relationship for me. 8-9 years ago, the OB here was the biggest but almost everyone here migrated there, and now Facebook has grown to be by far the biggest English speaking and multinational neo community right now, connecting Western growers with Japanese and Korean growers.

On the other hand, I started the Reddit sub two years ago to help gather people who aren't on Facebook and It's been growing slowly but steadily.

(I'm not a mod here so I can't retrieve the data exactly, but I'd say that there are 5-6 regular posters in the Neo subforum here on OB, with about 4-6 new posts per month. The Facebook Neo group currently has 2836 members, with an average of about 170 new posts a month. The Reddit Neo Sub has 256 members and about 12 new posts a month. Or another potential metric, possibly indicating the number of people with a deeper interest in neos rather than just those subscribed on passing: of the 171 Neo history booklets I've distributed so far, 2 were requested here, 161 on Facebook, 6 on Reddit)

I'm just wondering why the thread disappeared. Is hakumin a subscriber member and has forum privileges that allows for own thread removal?