Common Spotted var rhodochila

[rmielcarek]

I was entigued by Sean's posting, on the Surfbirds Wildflowers gallery, of a possible var rhodochila that he photographed today in Derbyshire.

I was lucky enough to be told about a var rhodochila this year in Wiltshire and to see and photograph it. I posted a picture of it on the Surfbirds gallery but another photograph is attached. Unfortunately it is a rather loose flowered specimen that was already past it's best when I saw it. Notice how the amount of colour on the labellum of most of the flowers is solidly reddish-purple but on at least one flower the labellum is less solidly marked.

At the same site, but not close by, I found another plant that had a solidly coloured central labellum but much less extensive (second picture) and another plant where the labellum had large swirls of colour (third photo).

According to the original description of this variety the labellum is marked 'with a broad central reddish-purple area with paler edges in place of dots and small lines'. What is not clear is how broad the broad central area needs to be to qualify.

In addition the description mentions that the leaves are rather more heavily spotted but I must say that I could not see that in any of these three plants.

Does anyone else have experience of this variant, particularly marginal examples?

Richard

[Ghostly Vision]

Hi Richard,

Rhodochila of course means "red-lipped", and my Derbyshire plant (the site does have this form there, though this was the nearest I got) was nowhere near that description.

Trouble is with these forms that within a species so variable anyway, where do you draw the line? D. fuschii is legendary for the variation in the amount of anthocyanin, which applies not only to the flowers, but the leaves too - hence some having spotted and some unspotted leaves. the reason rhodochila has more heavily spotted leaves is the excess of this pigment in general.

I have seen rhodiochila only once, and it looked like your first specimin (and also the pic on bottom left of page 138 of Turner Ettlinger). Your other two photo's to me look to be within the variation of standard fuschii - as indeed is my Derbyshire plant (see p136 of the same book, bottom left and right).

My picture is attached for reference.

Hope this helps

Sean

[rmielcarek]

Sean

I was sifting through some old pictures from 2005 and came across this, which I had ignored at the time. Seems like another candidate for var rhodochila? It was taken at a different site to the pictures that I posted above.

Richard