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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

First blooms open on oncidium

A delicate veining of the petals shows through in the sunset light

     It's finally happened!  Almost exactly 2 months after I first noticed a spike, the first flower buds are opening.  It's a relatively small flower spike: only 6 blooms.  Once the orchid's roots have further recovered, I expect to see bloomings that match its former glory: flower spikes over 3 feet high with dozens and dozens of blooms.  For now, I am certainly enjoying my first orchid blooming since moving to New York!

     The flowers are about 2.5 inches across, in either direction.  They also have an odd sort of spicy/musky scent.  I can't quite decided whether I think it's pleasant or not.
how the color looks to the naked eye in diffuse light: a kind of terra-cotta earthy red

     
I edited the color tones in the above photograph to match how the orchid's color looks to my eyes, since my camera was making the reds of the petals and the yellows on the lip stand out much more than I could see. 

camera flash gives the blooms a lovely waxy red tinge, but looks nothing like what I see with my eyes

     All the three closeup shots of the blooms look very different due to changes in lighting.  One might think they were three different flowers!

two buds fully open, one partly open, and three flower buds still developing

     As you can see in the last picture, the inflorescence is not yet in full bloom.  I'll post an update once the last buds open.  In the meantime, I'm taking advantage of my tripod to put together some timelapse videos of the opening flowers.  It won't be the professional level, since I can't sit at home taking a photo every 30 minutes for a month as the flowers open (nor do I have the setup for an automatic shutter), but it's still pretty cool ;-).  

     If anyone seeing this has suggestions for what might be the name of this lovely noid, I'd love to hear any ideas!

EDIT 3/29: Identified as Wilsonara Pacific Perspective!

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