Neofinetia, Unnamed 3-Spur Hybrid
 

This guy actually flowered about a month ago, but I forgot about posting the photos.

It's an unnamed cross between Manjushage and an unnamed dark pink flower neo hybrid. It is a sibling to Gongju, which is the thumbnail next to my screenname above.

While a normal Manjushage will also occasionally have pink spurs, it's darker on this one and the tips of the petals are also pale pink.

http://www.hakuminurushi.com/storage...9/Unnamed1.jpg

http://www.hakuminurushi.com/storage...9/Unnamed2.jpg

http://www.hakuminurushi.com/storage...9/Unnamed3.jpg

Absolutely beautiful.

Your comment about Manjushage was much appreciated. I occasionally have seem to detected a tiny hint of pink on the spurs of my Manjushage but wasn't sure whether I was “seeing things” that didn’t really exist. Now I’m pretty sure mine does indeed have an almost undetectable amount of pink!

Incidentally my very first Neo, the one that got me started on all this, was a white (purchased from Lager and Hurrell, the first commercial orchid establishment in the US, established in the 1800's) which was from a seedling population and what intrigued me was that it displayed a tiny thread of pink occasionally in its spurs.

so flowers from a single fan? one these special flower types, do they tend to have less flowers per spike?

This one is a single fan yes. I've had little issue flowering single growths, honestly.

Flowers per spike depends on culture and strain. My Kibana Manjushage is my most floriferous of my triple spurs, blooming on average 10 flowers per spike. Some strains of Manjushage on the other hand are notorious for only blooming one or two flowers per spike.

Well, as they say, modesty IS a virtue. ;)

ok, throwing a manjushage on the wish list with shunkyuden (reference to other thread).

Well, the reason I said that was because there are some people who insist that single fans cannot be bloomed.

uh huh, right...

hey if you got it you got it, no worries ;)

But I've gathered that some varieties stay single or double fan for many years perhaps flowering repeatedly on those fans while others grow a lot of fans and have one spike or three (pine needles of course grow multiple fans and flower rarely). Yet another dimension to neo growing, understanding the growth rate and habits of each variety.

Yeah, some plants tend to bloom like crazy but never put out offshoots, others tend to only let out offshoots and are sparse on blooms.

However, I suspect that sometimes it has to do with cultural conditions too. I had a 1 growth plant once that bloomed easily for me like crazy. Every year two spikes, 9-10 flowers per spike. It never gave me a single new growth though.

I gave it away to make room for other varieties and for the new owner, the complete opposite. It suddenly started letting several new growths a year, but he's only managed to get it to bloom once.

On the other hand, there seem to be some varieties or strains where lots of people experience the same behavior.

Here is this year's bloom.

http://www.shirasora.com/fukiran/orc...24/Yeonji4.jpg

http://www.shirasora.com/fukiran/orc...24/Yeonji1.jpg

http://www.shirasora.com/fukiran/orc...24/Yeonji2.jpg

http://www.shirasora.com/fukiran/orc...24/Yeonji3.jpg

Also, the plant is no longer unnamed. It's been given the name Yeonji 臙脂, in reference to the rouge traditionally used to make the red dots on the bride's cheeks during the Korean Pyebaek ceremony.

Probably the most appropriate name ever given to a Neofinetia.