Bulbophyllum mucronatum (?)

[christerb]

Hi,

I got this plant recently labelled B. sp #1, which was supposed to originate from Papua New Guinea. After first having seen it, I thought it reminded a lot of B. alagense (a philippine species) which seems to be quite common in nurseries nowadays.

I missed that it was about to flower, and found a pretty boring flower. When comparing with photos it seemed to confirm that it indeed was B. alagense. However, I now think that it may be a close relative - B. mucronatum which is quite wide spread in Southeastern Asia, apparently not PNG though.




Regards,

Christer

[max]

very nice pictures!
did you get the plant from Orchids&more? I guess I have the same plant then...
I really don't know if wecan trust the lable, which says it's from PNG..
But B. alagense is now (as far as I know) a subspec to B. mucronatum.
Probably it's a B tjadasmalangense..
But I have to admit I really don't know the differences between these spec's.

[christerb]

Hi Max,

B. tjadasmalangense is indeed another possibility.

Yes, it is a O&M plant, and I have received mislabeled plants before from them so the PNG tag probably is incorrect. Unless any of these two species has a wider distribution than has been previously known.

It would certainly be nice to know the difference between B. tjadasmalangense and B. mucronatum. Searching photos of any of the species does not help much, but then with so many mislabeled plant photos on-line who knows if the photos depicting these species are correct. It would be nice to have the original descriptions to see if they really are as similar as they seem. If they are, maybe some taxonomist would include B. tjadasmalangense with B. mucronatum, like they have done with B. alagense.

Regards,

Christer