This will be the first of 5 emails with images for a CBR given in Pacific South at the Newport Harbor Orchid Society Show last weekend. The plant was exhibited with the name Onc. spathelatum which apparently doesn't exist but we didn't know it at the time without an internet connection.

I was part of the team and spoke briefly later with the exhibitor. We do not have reliable collection information. He thought it might have come from Panama but since it was given to him by someone who collected orchids in several countries years ago I'm not sure we can put much stock in it. If you saw this plant out of flower you'd simply pass it off as an Onc. sphacelatum - everything about the plant says that. However that inflorescence is really strange. It's multibranched like sphacelatum but each branch is tightly appressed to the central rachis (so tightly so that attempts to pull them away from the main rachis more than a millimeter or two end up snapping them off.

Bottom line - the names obviously wrong.

Ron
Onc. spathelatum, award 20102018, has been confirmed to be Oncidium isthmi by SITF (March 2010), with assistance by Eric Christenson. You may not process the award.