Phal. Yaphon Blue Bird
 

Despite the serious abuse my poor phals have suffered this summer, one of the few surviving buds (of all the buds on my phals) actually made it and opened into a rather wonky looking first flower.

https://i.imgur.com/MtcSekF.jpg

I'm super happy that the bud survived in the first place and the delightful fragrance and lovely purple colour are great sources of joy.

The flower is quite "cupped" beside being wonky and I hope the next flower (unless I kill it first) will look a bit better. Super happy with the colour and fragrance though.:biggrin:

I am not sure what 'wonky' means, but I think the bloom is outstanding. You are right-- the color overrides any appearance defects.

The wonky aspect is that it looks like it almost went peloric and then decided not to. It has a yellow-ish bump on one of its petals. It's more visible to the naked eye that in the picture.

dude, i am super finicky about my plants, and my better half would say i am obsessive over how they look - especially the flowers. and i will tell you that we/i am realizing that the amazing pics of huge perfects sprays of flowers are the true pinacle of orchid growing and we mortals can only hope to get lucky with all perfect flowers.

plus, is that lip as black in real life as it appears in the pic?? nice flower, and yeah, i bet the next ones will be better....

It's mostly the bump it has on one petal that bugs me. It's not as visible in the pictures, but very noticeable IRL. That's why I think it has a failed peloric mutation because it looks like an attempt at imitating the lip.

No, it's not black at all. It's a very dark purple and my cellphone really struggles with taking pictures of it. I've done what I could to get is as correct as possible, but the dark parts of the flower are still too dark. :(

Here's a picture of the flower from above (where you can also see the bump more clearly on its left petal) where maybe the lip is a bit closer to its actual colour:
https://i.imgur.com/HUTjqha.jpg

By the way, if I sound dissatisfied with it, I'm not. I'm SO happy with it and I look at it and smell it several times a day. I'm super happy I got two of them even, especially since Schwerter seems to have sold the ones they had. This is definitely a favourite. :biggrin:

yeah, it looks good! the next one will be even better.

i only asked about the lip because for some reason i have a secret obsession with black flowers. i think it all started with the quest for the black rose and since then i have tried to collect true examples of black plant parts. i dunno, something strange about it.

the histroy of rose breeding in turkey is a cool study if you are interested in black flowers....

anyways, the leaves on your plant are looking lush and happy and you've got a second spike coming, so its looking content!