keeping records

17 years ago

hi

was wondering how people go about this ?? with most plants if you get the species right you've got it whipped but with orchids the list goes on and on and ... lol

i recently bought several plants at a local sale and two are definitely mis labeled .one is a Paphiopedilum armeniacum but I believe it is actually.P acmodontum as all the pix i can find of the former have yellow flowers while this one has purple ,green and white. if this is also a hybrid then it's hopeless i know. but my guess is that it's definitely not what the label says.

Most of my collection is mislabeled and would like to find a way to straighten this out.lol

The internet is certainly a great help but of course there are sooooo many types.

So how do you keep your labels straight ?? I relly don't much care what cultivar it is but species is so useful when looking for info.

The other two are epi ferns and I THINK I have them identified lol gary

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Comments (5)

richardol
17 years ago
That is a serious problem. The way I do it is re-pot only one plant at a time, so that it is labeled and put away before the next one is unpotted. Same for divisions.

We recently had a great suggestion here to add a second label inside the pot and I am going to start doing that, I think.

Color is important, but is not a key factor in identifying plants. Paphiopedilum armeniacum Paphiopedilum acmodontum have substantially different shaped parts.

You did what I always do, look for pictures of new plants. Since I collect species more than hybrids, I go to (and subscribe to) OrchidSpecies.com
komi
17 years ago
it gets rather cryptic. I google to confirm, then if there's a discrepancy, I keep both the original tag (now marked with a ? or incorrect) and a new "guess" tag (marked as a "probably" or "possibly"). Sometimes the source of my plant has limited inventory so it's a simple matter of tag swapping and the mystery is solved.

On your paph, if you post a photo on the slipper forums, they should at least be able to tell you if it's a species or hybrid.
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garyfla_gw
Original Author
17 years ago
Hi
Thanks for the info. Some of my plants go back 25 years and with moving offsets and remodeling the whole grow area about the only thing i'm sure of is what family lol
Since i'm trying to do away with the pots altogether it will be even more difficult. Have grown multiple species in the same groups for many years and many of my tags are suspect. Just recently had a yellow and red Catt flower and i don't remember ever having one lol.
One grouping I redone has Catts, dends, vandas terete vandas and epidendrums. but which ones lol
My goal is to make an integrated 'rainforest" just for fun.
The paph is a first for me and i bought it only because it was so cheap lol and names only matter when looking for info or trading
think what i might do is make a scale drawing looking down on the plantings and put the names in there.
of course this requires that I have names in the first place lol.
I get bored researching names and I'm very lazy also.
Thanks very much for the suggestions!!! gary
komi
17 years ago
Gary, do you tie tags to your plants? I've started attaching embossed metal tape tags to psuedobulbs and growths and whatever else is handy. I also rely a lot on photos these days - take a pic when I get it, include the tag info, and then later I find I'm searching through my photo album to find the ID. (Of course, this all presumes you have an ID and that the ID is correct...lol)
garyfla_gw
Original Author
17 years ago
komi
That might work but over the years I've found that many
werre tagged incorrectly even when I first brought them home. I usually just accepted the tag as correct as it's almost impossible to do this with books but with the internet it's a different story. You can get instant pix of countless types without a lot of work lol. Still I find great variation in pix of the same species.
Most of the replanting has been done at least on the seep wall and a "map "is fairly easy as you can look straight on to the area. Many of my old plants are still in tree fern pots which will eventually be moved to multi-specie hanging setups either with natural limbs or PVS pipe.
I have kept notebooks over the years and i laugh as i read through them.Either A I can't read my own writing.B I used so much abbreviation it makes no sense or C I can read it .it makes sense but I'm almost certain it's wrong lol
I don't mind working with cultural notes but again this requires keeping records . i'm a grower not a Botanist lol.
Oh well ,they're just as beautiful even without names and I'm an old man .Too late to change my habits.
Thanks again for the suggestions gary

keeping records

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