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The thread "Our Orchid blooms in March 2020 🍀" in Orchids forum

Today is April 1. and unfortunately the funny jokes must wait for happier times. But - let's all hang tight, be careful to stay healthy and come to our forum to share our Orchid blooms and discussions. Don't let this guy get you!!

Let me continue our discussion regarding the Dendrobium aggregatum/lindleyi and jenkinsii. Here is how I understand it: I just took side to side pictures, the smaller plant in bloom is jenkinsii. Hopefully the larger lindleyi will start spiking soon too. The Pseudobulbs and leaves are clearly larger on the lindleyi not in bloom.


And yesterday's Dendrobium jenkinsii pics


and my old Encyclia bractescens starts opening


and Dendrobium Nestor's modest blooming has such a nice scent, I enjoy walking past it!


Please all join in and share the fun!

Beautiful start to the month Ursula!
I just took the iPad out to the bench and showed the pictures to my sleeping aggregatum and little jenkinsii plants.



I hope they get sufficiently motivated..otherwise your salad fork idea will be employed.
Meanwhile, I have no complaints about this sweet Grt. Why Not.

You know something, that is just a beautiful little plant!
I have to kick something off of my favorite all time Cattleya hybrid list and move that up and into my "Top 10!!"

Salad Fork? Oh yes, it is known to work!
The Why Not is a cutie!!

Okay everyone for what it is worth to all of you I took a deep dive into the Dendrobium jenkinsii versus lindleyi question and here is what I found by looking through AOS awards, worldwide awards and Dendrobium books written by experts on the genus.
I will do Dendrobium jenkinsii first. There are 11 total awards worldwide to this species, only 3 are AOS awards! One is a JC for color and 2 are for culture. CCM's to be specific. The best CCM I found was to a clone of jenkinsii that had 400 flowers on 200 inflorescences!! That in and of itself is incredible.
According to botanical descriptions, the flowers natural spread is 3.0 cm. None of the 11 awards had larger flowers! None had a flower count above 3.5 per inflorescence. None. So if your jenkinsii produces 8-10 flowers per inflorescence, it is not jenkinsii!
Bulb length of jenkinsii is 1.2-2.0" Leaf length is also 1.2-2.0". All award descriptions are within that range. So there isn't a larger jenkinsii floating around out there.
The one sure fire descriptive point that I could find other then bulb and leaf length has to do with the lip. The lip of jenkinsii is entirely pubescent or hairy. That is in the botanical description, 100%. The lip of lindleyi is not 100% hairy. Lindleyi's lip is smooth or hair free along the outer edges.
NOW here is the best point I can make and I can't emphasize this any more strongly, if there were more floriferous clones out in the world of Dendrobium jenkinsii, ones producing 8 or more flowers per spike, they would at least get a JC for floriferousness!! That has NOT happened. It may have happened somewhere at some point but I suspect that the clone was sent in for an ID just to make sure because it would be so unusual. The IDs if done probably came back as lindleyi.

Now for lindleyi. There are 115 worldwide awards to this species. There are 49 AOS awards. Average flower count to those awards, both AOS and worldwide, is 21.7 per. The botanical description refers to a flower count of from 10-15 per. But that is too low according to the records of the awards.
Lindleyi has bulbs that are between 2"-4" or 5-10 cm., so there is a smidge of unity there at 2.0" but I remind you there is no description of a jenkinsii with bulbs longer then 2", just up to 2".
The leaf length of lindleyi can be between 4-8" or 10-20 cm.
The natural spread of a jenkinsii flower is only 3 centimeters. I found none that were awarded with larger flowers. The average natural spread of an awarded lindleyi flower over the course of 49 AOS awards is 3.8 centimeters which is just under 30% broader.
The last point I have to make is that the length of a jenkinsii leaf is 2", just two inches. I found none that were described as being larger.
The leaf length of lindleyi is typically 3".
Oops, I have another point. Jenkinsii has an inflorescence that is "short, held just above the leaves". The inflorescence of the lindleyi is from 6 to 12" in length. Both spikes are described as thin or slender!

Bill, this is awesome information. Thank you for all the research involved. Just knowing the length of the bulb/ leave is a huge piece of the puzzle. The little bare root I got from Hamlyn's at the Tamiami Show is most certainly correctly tagged as jenkinsii and the other deadbeat that is just taking up space this season is most certainly lindleyi .

Bill, awesome job here, thank you!!
With a flower count of mostly 8 blooms per spike, one spike has 9, I am already out of the jenkinsii range on my diminutive plant. Leaf and pbulbs have the right size for jenkinsii, also blooms size is fitting in, except I don't see the pubescent lip, it looks smooth to me.
Perhaps I am now shooting for hybrid?

Well a natural hybrid is something that I didn't find but I imagine there is a chance. The one thing I couldn't find is the size of the pubescense. I imagine you might need a 10X handlens to see it and I might suggest removing a flower and then look for it.
It is my pleasure to do the research and to get to some clues. Perhaps we are splitting hairs here but they are both gorgeous.
One other small point for what it is worth. In looking at images and reading all I could through the descriptions, what came across to me is this. A vast majority of the lindleyi flowers are rounder and fuller. A lot of the jenkinsii flowers were not. There was more of a unity in flower color to jenkinsii than to lindleyi. Lindleyi has been described from very pale yellow all the way up to medium yellow, deep yellow, canary yellow, orange/yellow and so on! Interesting in the way people see or perceive color.
Anyway, it was my pleasure to have done this and I hope that this answers some questions that all of you, my dearest friends, might have had.

Yes, great job, Bill. My Den aggregatum are two plants on one cork mount. I've always thought I had both lindleyi and jenkinsii I but guess not. Both were originally tagged as aggregatum only.

Pretty sure one plant has much smaller leaves than the other but they're maybe 3in. on the smaller plant and it sure does have many blooms per spike, too. So maybe a cross?

I can't look at my plant until mid May at the soonest but Marsh did send me a pic.

I used to import Dendrobium species directly from SE Asia back in the early 80's. Such species as, thyrisiflorum, lindleyi, farmeri, chrysotoxum, pierardii, anosmum, and others. I perhaps saw 500 lindleyi's come in. The size ranges of these plants was broad. There was a mid range or average size. The were a few that were larger and some that were small. So small as to appear to be jenkinsii like.
Now a smaller growing lindleyi under less then ideal culture could stay under 2" in terms of leaves and bulbs. And I am sure that to a much lesser extent there are possibly a few jenkinsii can, under great culture, develop psuedobulbs that are 2 1/8" or 2 3/16". But I doubt that great culture can consistently produce bulbs of jenkinsii up to 3" in size or more or consistently produce jenkinsii spikes with 10-15 flowers. It seems likely to
me that due to the difficulty of growing this species, this could easily lead to smaller growths and lower flower counts on lindleyi.

I really wished that every time I had a lindleyi in flower, in my hand, I
Looked for the lack of hairs along the outer part of the lip.
And I really doubt that with their reputation as being difficult to flower, hybridizers over the years have been 'chomping at the bit' to hybridize with it. Keep in mind that another big strike against making hybrids is the very short life of the blooms. So in summary I feel that by far and away the vast numbers of these are simply lindleyi's in a smaller form, not jenkinsii.
The award records can be very powerful evidence.

These two have been on that same mount for 5 years at least. The size diff was obvious when I got them and has remained consistent, and you can see it in my pic. The top right leaves are just over 3in. Long and the ones in the lower left are almost twice the size.

Can't see and don't remember the size of the pseudobulbs but they're certainly suffering the same care or lack thereof. It's a puzzler.

As you say, not likely a breeder would bother, but still possible there's an opportunist cross of the two around, since both Ursula and I seem to have this intermediate sized one with multiple flowers?

They are not really intermediate sized, they are just smaller lindleyi's. It is the flower count and length of spike that gives them away.
If they consistently flower with more then 5 round flowers, then they are lindleyi.
Just look at Rhyncholaelia digbyana. There are 2 different geographical forms. One is large and robust with much larger bulbs and leaves. There is another form with much smaller bulbs and leaves. My muddled brain does not readily remember where they are found but they are both digbyana. I don't believe that a plant is given new species status due to a different size. There has to be some other consistent and reliable reason. Such a reason or reasons exist with jenkinsii. Namely size of bulb, leaf, flower shape and lip pubescense. Leaf and bulb length are not a valid reason but flower shape, count, and length of inflorescence are.

Dendrobium hybrid.
My little Dendrobium hybrid is in bloom it could be Dend.Kingiaum.





Prabhi S

It could also be the species Dendrobium kingianum. Not a hybrid at all. But it has kingianum color.

I must apologize to everyone. I managed to find that some person did hybridize lindleyi and jenkinsii. It is called Dendrobium Ueang Pheung! I don't know what that means but I don't think that I want to step in it!!
Not only has it been registered, there are three AOS awards. I am flabbergasted. Not because the hybrid was made which still seems silly to me but what could possibly be the goal!? The cross has 2 AM's and a CCE. The CCE has 255 flowers, 16 buds, on 30 inflorescences. That is 9 per inflorescence.
There is an AM with 96 flowers on 5 inflorescences or 19.2 per. The other AM had 51 flowers on 10 inflorescences. The CCE had a natural spread of 2.6 X 2.3. Ylthe first AM was 3.4 X 2.2 and the other was 4.0 X 3.6.
The one part of the description that was completely lacking was a vegetative component. For a CCE, that is unacceptable but somehow made it past the editors.
The flowers were generally from shorter inflorescences, not the longer graceful ones that I enjoy so much on a lindleyi. The blooms were a bit cupped.

Ohh cool! Bill, you are terrific!
We need a native Chinese speaker to pronounce this little gem of a name!

I wonder if it might be from Thailand? I just don't know.
I am still having trouble trying to understand why the hybrid was made.
I know that some hybridizers subscribe to the notion that " any 2 plants in flower at the same time should be crossed". But I have to move on because my brain is getting too warm 🧠!!!
Welcome everyone.

How about a Bifrenaria harrisoniae? The bloom count is a bit down from last year, but I am not complaining. I heard years ago that this Orchid grows on the slope of the Redeemer mountain in Rio de Janeiro.

Just a gorgeous flower with an even prettier lip!!!

LOL! As usual, you're a few weeks ahead of me! I was just checking the buds on my Bifrenaria Harrisoniae.