confusion
 

How do you distinguish between one species and another?
I have seen phales that are very similar to the dends, and the oncids close to the other two. I am so very new to the orchid world, and I love my plants. I would like to enter some next year at our county fair.

Buy yourself some books on orchids to use for reference.:hmm This is the first logical step,also a note pad if you see a chid that takes your fancy :drool: write down the name and look it up in the books.If no luck there you can always google. Things should start to fall into place from there.:banana:

As Gongora wrote, start to buy some book and there are alot of information on internet. Though the problem with internet is that everyone show the flower but seldome the hole plant.....

Join your local orchid society and go to their show. I know of at least three orchid societies in Wisconsin (one in Milwaukee, one in Madison, and one in Green Bay). Better yet, volunteer to clerk at the show, you will learn a lot.

The only way to get reasonably adept at telling one orchid from another is to see lots of them. You get better with practice. And you will never learn them all. That is part of what makes orchid growing fun!

There is SO much information available out there, if you're willing to look for it.

Having access to the internet opens all the doors...books, forums (ours being THE BEST, of course :) ) and as Rob (Littlefrog) said...join your local society! What a great place to absorb information! I think they must pump something into the air because everytime I leave that meeting, I realize I've learned so much more than I knew when I walked in!

I've been growing for about a year and a half, have been a member of our society for most of it and have recently been voted onto the Board!

When we were preparing for our show last year, the Board members requested some volunteers to be on the clerking teams, who work closely with the judges at the shows. It took me a while to finally sign the roster and I'm so happy I did it! I plan on doing it any time the opportunity comes up :)

It gives you the chance to get familiar with orchids in all their glory. By watching the judges, I learned a lot about what they look for in a plant...good and bad.

The information you need to grow happy healthy orchids is abundant...and it starts right here at OrchidBoard!

Check out your local library if it is like ours, there will be many orchid books to devour. Searching our local branch, shows 105 titles!

Join a society or four! Most societies have excellent libraries. I particularly liked borrowing the bound 1 year of AOS bulletins from 60's and 70's and reading about orchids from earlier times.

Thanks for the feedback. I will check out the library, and check out some of the other societies (yours being the best, of course). I have found a lot of info on the internet, but there's a lot of misinformation out there.

You can also check out this website. It lists a ton of orchid species by genera and is great for basic info. If you don't find a name that you've seen here it may be a good bet that its a hybrid.

If you're looking for paphs specifically. There's http://www.slipperorchids.info/ Stephen's site gets into parent information for primary hybrids as well.