Hi Kenni,

"Kenni Judd" wrote in message
...
Ted -- Puzzle, indeed; little of this adds up. In particular, I have no
idea what you mean by "scars," that would be present on a division ...
Unless you've taken the plant out of the pot to look at the oldest part of
the rhizome?

By scars, I mean the sort of "damage" that is visible on the end of the
rhizomes on those of my catts and dends that were bought as divisions. I
did do a bit of poking around the rhizome, and saw nothing resembling a cut.
Similarly, there is no trace of a previous inflorescence. On all of my
orchids that I know had previously flowered, I can see what is left after
the old inflorescence had been cut off. There is no such cut inflorescence
on my plant.

I had no intention, in my prior posting, of suggesting that your vendor
was anything less than 100% honest. Only that after hours of talking to
people who don't know an orchid from a petunia (happens a lot at shows),
he might have "oversimplified" his answer to you. Or been relying on
_his_ vendor.
I know. But another response in that thread could be interpreted as making
such a suggestion.

The suggestion of over simplification, though, doesn't seem likely because
when I was speaking with him, he was not busy. There were no other buyers
nearby, so there was no time constraint. And as I know him, he knows me,
and knows that I have some experience with orchids. Unless pressed for
time, he and the other orchid vendors I deal with will tell me all about
both the ecology and the genetic background of the orchids they have
available.

If the description I was given is incorrect, I'd guess my vendor was not
given an accurate story by his vendor. Since my plant isn't going anywhere,
I'll check the rhizome again when I decide to put it into semihydro next
year, between bloomings.

It could be a first-bloom seedling that would bear the grex name Sharry
Baby [but not the clonal name 'Sweet Fragrance'] if someone remade the
cross a few years back. And there were a lot of other fragrant clones of
this first crossing, so there's no reason to think that the offspring of a
re-make would not produce a lot of fragrance.

That is what I thought it probably was, but I was not sure how such a
seedling would be labelled if either or both of its parents were Sharry Baby
'Sweet Fragrance'. We'll find out for sure when it goes into semihydro
sometime next year as then I'll have an opportunity to rip the root ball
open. BTW: He did pull the plant out of the pot to show me how well its
roots had grown. I have never seen a potted plant of any kind or of any
size that had so many healthy roots!

Thanks,

Ted


--
R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making