P. equestris 'Apari' with orange lip.
 

Yup, that's what arrived today. :biggrin:

It's the most expensive chid I've bought so far since the person whom I bought it from had to order two chids (and lucky me she chose two equestris) to reach the "must buy for at least this much to place an order" limit, so I paid the full price for it plus shipping costs from the vendor to the buyer/seller and then the shipping costs to me. The sweet person who sold it to me still lost some money on the deal because she felt it got so very expensive and lowered the price a bit. Isn't that nice? :blushing:

It's standing on the sink unit at the moment, looking small and cute (despite being a rather mature plant). Unfortunately it didn't have any spikes but hopefully that will change in the near future.

I'll upload a photo or two of it tomorrow since I'm too tired to do so today. It's nap-time for me, my cats, and the Phals.
:waving

So here are two pictures of it. It looks like a healthy plant and I hope it'll like living with me. On the second picture is the pot it arrived in. I felt it was unnecessarily large and re-potted the Apari into a smaller one (as you can see). It fits perfectly in its new pot and there was no root abuse during this re-potting. I feel I've gotten the hang of potting now after doing it on almost all of my Phals. :biggrin:

Was that the auction that you were talking about? I remember that one of the plants was an orange one.

---------- Post added 03-03-2012 at 12:20 AM ---------- Previous post was 03-02-2012 at 10:32 PM ----------

I was just looking at the website of my favorite grower (in Italy) in view of ordering orchids to have shipped to my mother (cheaper shipping to france) that I would pick up at Easter.

They have one called Phal. equestris Apari orange! And 'only' 15€! How you seen photos of the one you bought? I was wondering if it was like the normal Phal equestris 'orange'

No this is just one 'Apari' that sort of fell into my lap. The auction is still ongoing and someone had dared to bid on MY equestris 'Orange'. Trust me, you'll know when the auction is over and I've won the 'Orange' (since it is mine after all). ;)

No I did as you shouldn't and bought it unseen. The woman I bought it from had seen pictures of both of them when they bloomed and apparently it looks like an "ordinary" 'Apari', but instead of a pinkish/redish/wine couloured lip it has an orange one. In other words, I have no idea what it looks like until it decides to bloom!
:rofl:

But she has an 'Orange' herself and apparently it's not similar to that one.

Oooh, could you send me a link to the Apari orange in question so I may see it? It might be yet another equestris to put on my wishlist!:blushing:

No photo of it on the website, that's why I was asking!! It's new to the catalogue so they must not have pics of it yet to put up online.

I have a feeling it's the same as you just bought, just named a bit differently. I'll email the grower and ask what it's supposed to look like.

Oh shoot! It would have been nice to know what it's supposed to look like. :biggrin:

It might be the same variety I have and it might not. It seems the naming of varieties is a bit arbitrary when it comes to equestris...

I'll let you know what the grower says it is, I sent an email. If it's a true 'orange' type (and not just an orange-ish lip) I'm snapping one up!

Today I decided to take care of placing my order at Schwerter, since I assumed they were shipping again (it's 12-15°C during the day now). But they STILL aren't shipping anything outside of Germany!

That is very sweet of you, I appreciate your feeding my equestris obsession. :biggrin:

I know! I'm getting a bit frustrated since I've been waiting for my order for some time now. But it seems as they're not the only German vendor that is doing this, I found another which is also not shipping outside of Germany due to the low temperatures. :(