Hi Bernard You asked about Dendrobium furcatum after Sandra Hardy gave you the parentage of Dendr. Mousmee as D. furcatum x D. thyrsiflorum. I can make no authoritative comment on D. furcatum being used in a hybrid (even though it seems improbable), but I can comment on D. furcatum, since I was actively hunting for this species for several years.
D. furcatum has been collected at least 20 times since it was first described in 1854 (based on herbarium specimens at Kew and Singapore) .... on almost every occasion the origin is North Sulawesi. This count includes collections labelled D. amabile. About three-quarters of these collections are pre-1938, and the remainder were between 1960 and 1975. It is quite likely that other plants ended up in live-plant collections rather than as herbarium specimens, but I've found no records of these, and neither have a couple of other authors who have searched far and wide for evidence of such collections. Most likely the plants died after quite quickly after being moved. D. furcatum is probably quite common in both North Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi. In North Sulawesi it currently occurs as an epiphyte between 800-1100 metres altitude on dense 3-4 metre high shrubs just below the poison-gas zone at the apex of active volcanic cones. Although this is the only habitat I've seen it in, it almost certainly occurs elsewhere, since life that close to the gas-cloud zone is rather tenuous. The point is that few people bother looking for interesting plants (let alone orchids) in such localities, which is probably why records are sporadic. In the Central Sulawesi mountains it occupies a totally different niche, in which it is almost invisible unless in flower. Each time I've seen it, it was growing between waist-height and head-height on a tree in moss-forest. The lower 2-3 metres of tree-trunk in this sort of forest are covered in moss, and thin grasses growing on the forest floor send long adventitious rhizomes up onto the mossy layer to exploit the extra space. D. furcatum grows amongst these grasses on the mossy tree-trunks. Since the orchid is convincingly grass-like in habit, it is extremely well camouflaged and is unlikely to be detected until it flowers. The flowers are ephemeral, and produced infrequently, so detection rates must be minimal. The flowers are extremely beautiful, and non-typical of Dendrobium ... indeed, when viewed from the front there is a close resemblance to a Holcoglossum. There are two colour-forms .. plants from North Sulawesi are white with a yellow anther, while those from Central Sulawesi are white with a lilac midlobe and either a dark purple or lilac-and-yellow anther. I've also seen and photographed the only other closely-related species in Sulawesi; Dendrobium superans J.J.Smith. This plant does appear to be much rarer than D. furcatum. D. has larger flowers with a longer, straighter spur. In other respects (including the flower colour; white with purple lip) the two are identical, and I'm not certain that D. superans deserves it's status as a separate species. Cheers, Peter O'Byrne in Singapore _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
