Prosthechea cochleata (Cultivated)

 

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Orchidee from Ritterhude for ID: I don’t know what Orchidee this one is. I did not buy it.
The story:
The supermarkets sell not only everything from paper to chocolate to fish. But they also have flowers and plants on sale. It is a pity because most of the flowers don’t see any daylight once they are in the markethall and the staff have no idea at all about how to care for the different flowers. Anyway, this orchidee was on a trolly where there were many other plants, half dead, and not looking healthy. They were sorted out and were to be thrown away. I talked to one woman from the supermarket but she did not allow me to carry the plant. I insisted on talking to the bigboss. He explained me, that  they normally don’t sell the plants even for half the price or just give them away, to avoid misuse of this practice. Anyway after some discussion he gave me the plant. That is how it is now in my room. After a long time it is flowering now, just three at present but I hope to see more flowers next time. But I don’t know the name of it. Experts, plz Id it. 

–  Sometimes, it helps if you can imagine how it looks like. Make vague guesses and you can be right, especially with orchids. This is called Octopus Orchid though it doesnt have 8 arms.

Prosthechea cochleata

– Really nice orchid. I also saw several orchids in California stores, but people there know it well how to look after them, or may be they are sold faster.

– Yes it is the Octopus orchid. One of the more common orchids available in garden centres in Europe. About bad care of plants sold in supermarkets or even garden shops – it is quite common all over. Plants are nowadays a thing you buy to match your interior design set up rather than a intersting plant you want to grow.And when it stops flowering it is most often thrown away. Sad but true.

– yes I had already tried to imagin how it looked. In fact I thought of spider but gave up because “this spider” did not have 8 legs. Some other insect with 6 legs did not come to my mind.
g it is most often thrown away. Sad but true.

 

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Prosthechea radiata (Lindl.) W.E.Higgins : 22 posts by 5 authors. Attachments (4)- around 300 kb each. 
Location: Hong Kong Park  
Date: 15 August 2018
Elevation: 200 ft.
Habit : Cultivated
Syn : Encyclia radiata (Lindl.) Dressler
No sir this should be Prosthechea cochleata (Encyclia cochleata).
Thank you …! It was labeled like that … !

People make mistakes, me too

Ha! Ha! So ID is correct …

My ID is correct this time 🙂

Wow, lovely plant( i think it is an orchid?).

Prosthechea cochleata (L.) W.E.Higgins.
Thank you … you are right. However, looks like the park people need to correct the ID! By the way why did they keep in a glass encloser ? Precious?

may be it’s pollen is precious. i have seen people swab pollen from orchid flowers in botanical gardens like vanilla flowers, nobody can see them plucking flowers, yet the have just stolen most important genetic material. before that thieves would carry wire cutters to cut snips of vanilla vines or some tree dwelling ferns or orchids. now they cant, so they were one step ahead….. so on and so forth…

or may be it needs different humidity and temp or can’t tolerate air conditioning or breeze. who knows?

Not local plant and hence not so important…

Ok. Noted

That’s a very interesting point of pollen swabbing and there is a reason for that.
You know if you cut plants, steal them and bring them to your place, it is certainly illegal and risky in the sense that people can see you carrying plants outside their natural habitat.
So, some people who already own plants at their garden or nursery, they take pollen swabs to pollinate their privately owned plant with flowers or they just pollinate two plants in the wild to collect fruits later on. I know some people do such things in here too. In one way it is good if fruits are produced on the wild plants. But its not good if all fruits are collect later on. Secondly, this is not a natural process afterall….
Imagine carrying a cutout from plant or carrying a cotton ear bud pollen swab. No one will ever understand that ear bud has the ear dirt on it or pollen :)….
Also, in some countries (many countries but not india), it is allowed to carry seeds. Even CITES permit is not needed for seeds.

yes. interesting but where we saw these incidences they were caught on camera. i do not know what happened to them legally but the security staff in the glasshouses came and removed them physically at least in one case. so we take it was not kosher.

Prosthechea cochleata (Encyclia cochleata).

“Not local plant and hence not so important… “
well its the national flower of Belize and found in southern swamps of Florida.
(this blog also says that its population has dwindled drastically even though available freely from cultivators.)
it comes from swamps of florida, so perhaps the glass box protected it from the a/c air?
there is a fantastic bw photograph on this page. about halfway down… love his photographs.

Well, the national plant of Florida should be conserved by Americans and not the Chinese :)!!

The point is it is not important as is it not native to Asia. Of course otherwise all plants are important.
Indeed there are lot of people working on conservation of this species in Florida.
Cypripedium calceolus is so rare in UK that it is protected by police but obviously it is distributed from Europe to Korea and Japan and Japanese police dont protect them.

not a national plant of florida. florida is not a nation. just a state in united states of america: USA. its national flower of Belize, a nation. i was guessing about the glass enclosure…that it was perhaps being protected from airconditioned air in the show.

—

and i have not understood the craze that makes people risk everything including reputation to steal orchids… well anyway, iti

ok mam, my mistake 🙂

Do you know, Bauhinia x blakeana is a national flower of Hong Kong. I am sure no one will save this plant in India as it is a hybrid. Just for example…..

yes. i re-discovered //remembered that fact when i discovered hong kong herbaria website, when … first started showing his hong kong finds

and you also sent  a link in one of the later cases.
when hurricane Aila felled trees in kolkata, in 2009, esp at the Agri-hort gardens, we the plant lovers looked up… the net , at mobot site we learned its history that its a sterile hybrid ….etc etc hence propagated by cuttings so which ever garden in the world. received a cutting or two, has been trying to keep it going. wonderful flowers

 

During my last visit I got an opportunity to visit the Hong Kong Park and shoot pictures of flowers. going through the images i got confused about one Orchid name kept inside a glass box. I guess the correct name should be Prosthechea cochleata (L.) W.E.Higgins instead of Encyclia radiata (Lindl.) Dressler labeled there . Could youn please look into this and correct it accordingly if wrong? 

Thank you for your interest in the plants in Forsgate Conservatory of Hong Kong Park. Thank you of your advice on the proper name of the Orchid Prosthechea cochleat . The label of the Orchid concerned has been revised to Prosthechea cochleata (章魚蘭) accordingly.  

So nice of you to make correction of the plant name . However, the credit goes to Orchid Specialist Dr. Pankaj Kumar  currently working at : 
Orchid Conservation Section
Flora Conservation Department
Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG) Corporation
Lam Kam Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong S.A.R., China 
References:

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