Pleione 2017

[SteveC2]

I usually wind up throwing some Tongariro away every year.  There's only so many that you can sell on eBay and my attempt at growing them outside in a bed failed completely, the slugs thought that it was Christmas.  Anyone know a recipe for pleione jam?

[Tim Harberd]

Hi Steve,
      I believe the bulbs are used in Chinese medicine... Another sales opportunity?

Tim DH

[karel_t]

Hi Steve,
Tim is right. Here is photo from one Chinese market. They are very good against sore throat 
K.

[Alex]

Wow! Very long-necked bulbs, what species is that? Is it humilis?

[sjusovare]

Alex : much too pink for humilis I think.
Karel, thanks for the answer

[Alex]

Yeah, it's not really quite like humilis but I don't know which other species have a neck like that. I think the pink color reflects the bulbs being covered or underground usually? So it's environmental rather than a feature of the species as such.

[vigor]

It‘s probably bulbocodioides. I bought bulbocodioides( sometimes mixed with forrestii alba),yunnanensis and × barbarae in a local market. These bulbs are sold for medical use. Yunnanese buy the bulbs and pickled them with honey to treat cough and someone who tried this told me it's fairly effective.

[sjusovare]

The pictures really don't do them justice... Pleione Piton 'Ballerina

[Bart]

Nice Piton, Julien. Mine are not showing any signs of pushing through yet. Everything seems very late this year. Strangely enough I have a pot of Wharfdale 'Pine Warbler' in flower now.
A picture below, with an artistic effort to capture them in water colours.
When they finished flowering I might try adding them to my Chinese mushroom stir-fry.....or maybe not

Pleione Wharfdale 'Pine Warbler'

[sjusovare]

Odd to see wharfdale in flower so late, perhaps they went into dormancy late too?
Nicely rendered anyway.

[john hodgson]

Julien your Ballerina photo looks wonderful - I spend an age waiting for the correct natural light to accurately show the pleione flowers' features. Even then, I find that with some of the purples/magentas it's just impossible to get the right hue, sometimes coming out too blue. I abandon automatic settings when photos look wrong, then I try and try with all kinds of white balance settings, perhaps getting close to true colour accuracy, then bring out the next pleione and it's all wrong again. It's not much use trying software afterwards either; I find that when correcting I may get the 'target colour' correct, but another colour is now wrong. i have an aging 'bridge' camera Lumix DMC-FZ28 which I am generally still very happy with... but not with some of my pleione shots.
It's too expensive buying multiple digital cameras to see which is best, but if anyone has an opinion out of their pleione/orchid experience I'd be glad to listen as I will be buying soon.
I greatly admire the photos taken by Steve Garvie (elsewhere and many places on this forum). I wonder what tips he may have?
Ballerina will be flowering for me for the first time this year so I have something to look forward to!

[sjusovare]

John, I actually "cheat" by not using only natural light: I always have natural light (northern exposition) coming from the left, and 2 weak artificial lights, one coming from above-left (warm white) and the other from below-left (cold white)

[Alex]

A first flowering of a forrestii-predominant Langur (ex-Paul Cumbleton). I like it, and thought I'd show it (iPhone pic notwithstanding) as it's rather different to those on Paul's website.

Cheers,

Alex

[john hodgson]

So... what do you think?
This one is new to me. The photo I'm familiar with (Koolplants) shows nice yunnanensis traits, (which is what I was hoping for) but mine is much pinker and closer to saxicola I think.

[ashley]

Lovely plants all. 
Here the first are Kohala and Sirena.  Eiger and P. forrestii clones will probably be next.