Beautiful! Both are stunning! I wish you success with the pollination.

Thanks. Here are a couple more of the first plant. I especially like the last flower.

Those are some striking flowers! I can't wait to see if you get seeds. Have you cultivated and grown seeds from your orchids before?

I double laticauda's question...have you grown orchids from seeds before? I looked into it, but it seemed complicated and time consuming. Can you tell us more? Good luck with your endeavor!

I have. Both tissue culture and flasking are topics I refer people to research on the internet because there is a ton of information out there. It would take far too much time and effort for me to explain.

I learned because I used to work for an orchid greenhouse years ago. Since then I have only dabbled lightly. I'm out of practice and being that we are in the midst of relocating from one home to another, it'll be a while before I can set up a lab space again. But, it'll take six months for pods to mature on a phalaenopsis so I have some time.

Alternatively, I could send a green, unopened seed pod to a laboratory and have them flask it for me. Costs vary but the first mother flasking often costs $15 to $20 and the follow up replating when the seedlings get crowded usually runs about the same per flask. Some places charge more so it's wise to shop around if prices are hugely higher than that. Orchid seedlings grow pretty slowly though so it can easily be a whilebetween flaskings. Depends on the type of orchid, the media they use, how long their lights run, etc.

Once you get your flasked seedlings (roughly 25 phals to a flask is typical) then they should be of a size to transplant into compots of sphagnum moss. It'll still take about a year and a half or two for them to reach first blooming size from there (about three years or more in total). The real problem of course is that if you end up with more than one flask, where the heck are you going to put all of those seedlings until they bloom? Then what to do with the ones you don't want? So if you ever try it, think that through and be prepared to dedicate the space and the time for them.

The bigger challenge for me right now is learning more about orchid genetics and color inheritance. In some cases I have learned that a lot of yellows used to be polyploids (tetraploids, triploids, etc) and how that effects trying to cross them with other plants. Or how yellows can come from two different kinds of pigments, or how yellow is linked to the pod parent (mother) but can't necessarily come from the father.

So what about French spots, harlequin patterns, or feathered picotee edges? I have no idea. That's what I am trying to research now. There is ever more to learn! I'm still an amature at this, at best.

Thanks, I'll go and look for that database. I've done enough hybridizing over the past few years to know how much of a lottery genetics are with other plants. Streptocarpus are easy by comparison. Seed pods mature in about 8 weeks and I can go from seed to first blooms in 5 months. They are easy to reproduce by leaves to test further generations for stability.

Where as with orchids I can be looking at anywhere from 6 months or more for pods to mature and a few years until first blooms. It's a very time consuming process with a lot of culling and takes up a lot of space. Even if you only do small batches.

But, I could use more practice with flasking so it doesn't matter if I loose some along the way.

YourPicotee is a beautiful bloom, love that fully saturated red lip!!!

Hyn, love your orchids! I have one looks like your second, but I found on Google looks the same called Charmer. What is the difference between Phalaenopsis Elegant Karin 'Aloha' and Charmer. I googled for both names and they look the same to me, but I am not guru

Thanks. Polina.

There are several that are yellow with spots. Mine however doesn't have red spots, they are purple and only the lip is bright red. Cameras however may make the spots look more red than purple in some shots. On your actual flower, is the spotting more red or purple and does it contrast with the lip or are about the same color?

As I haven't seen your plant in person, I can't answer your question. It is not uncommon for multiple plants to be registered that look similar and may be hard to tell apart. Just do an internet search on white or pink phalaenopsis named hybrids and you'll find lots of them! They may all look a like in photos but there can be differences we can't see so easily - such as flower size, or overall plant scale, or one hybrid may be notably more robust than an older one, etc. Even if the flowers look about the same - at least in photos.

Also, your yellow phal with red spots has a rounder shape - and probably a slightly different flower size if we could compare these side by side. To complicate things further - how we grow them, our culture including temperatures, humidity, PH, the kind of fertilizers and how much, the age and size of our plants, can all slightly alter the flowers from one blooming to the next. So even if we had the exact same hybrid, they might not /always/ look exactly alike even then.

Thank you, Hyn! The spots and the lip are dark burgundy under the day light. It's OK to have my beautiful plant as NOID.

I think somebody told me Charmer is more common and has the rounder form, so yours may be that. I don't know.

I also just bought one at a BB that is either Charmer or Elegant Karin Aloha. Spots are purple, but reddish purple. Lip is contrasting red. Do you think Charmer is more likely?

/Yours/ looks more like Elegant Karin Aloha, like mine, Odyssey3. It is hard to tell in photos but yours is less round and is more shaped like mine. Also the color looks more like mine. Charmer I think is the rounder and more reddish spots.

Thanks for your thoughts Patty. Very cool! About how big is your bloom?

I think I may have fond another distinguishing feature of Charmer--it looks like the older flowers are very noticeably yellow and a big contrast to younger flowers. The flowers on my plant are very uniform in color.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_YRFVZjObU

The flower size on mine is variable. Up to about three inches, but sometimes smaller. They seem pretty uniform in color and are uniformly pale yellow. I've not seen any of them as strongly yellow as they are on Charmer so far, though that may be slightly variable due to temperatures (yellows tend to be stronger in chillier conditions and I'm in the Deep South where it's very warm most of the year).

I am near DC and we have been cold, cold, cold and I am still not seeing strong yellow. My flowers remain very pale, (the pictures actually.look more yellow than the flowers look in real life), which makes me think you are very right that mine and yours are the same.

Mine is bright yellow and the spots are dark burgundy. The colors on my photo are the true colors. So, it looks like it's Charmer?

It sure looks like bright yellow is more of a match with Charmer. Do you have the blooms that are various shades of yellow too, like in the video?

No, they are all bright. In the video she is saying the flowers are changing the color as "aging".

Ah! I do not speak Russian. So yours don't have the aged color change?

Does this video have anything useful?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYrOjTIp_zo

Yellow flowers due tend to fade with age. That would be normal. My picotee at top of this post has faded though still a light yellow on the older flowers.

odyssey, not yet, they're all bright. The video has just music - the name of the video is "My Beautiful Orchid Phal Charmer ...).

One of mine has just started to fade. It seems to have taken on a bit of a rosy pinkish cast. I am propping it up on the left. Nothing as drastic as the above video showed for color changes.

Now this last photo really shows the contrast like mine has between the purple spots and the red lip. I think you and I have the same hybrid, Od.

I think so too Patty.