Notes on a Polystachya Hk.
As I was packing plants for the display at the Fraser Valley Orchid show, I decided to take along our Polystachya luteola, mainly because its rather small, yellow flowers exude a rather heavy, sweet scent; they also grow non-resupinate (upside-down)and look like little golden helmets.
Then while trying to fit my plants to the schedule classes, I found out that the Polystachyas have no recognized affinities with any other orchid genus. Even on the Wildcatt program, they stand there, all alone.
 Polystachya concreta |
Of course, I became intrigued. So instead of resting up for that show with its busy set-up, judging, selling, socializing into the late hours and frenzied take-down with the usual mad dash to catch the ferry, I started to look into books. There was not much to be found in my library. Neither could I find much on the computer. Then I looked into the program from the German Orchideen - Gesellschaft – haha! There was the name of ‘our’ Polystachya luteola, except it is a synonym to Pol. concreta, which has another synonym as Pol. mauritania. (Could this one have come from Mauritius?) Further into their article, I read that altogether this plant has had, up to now, 52 different names; not all of them were as Polystachyas. The oldest name goes back to 1760 where Jacquin had it written up as Epidendrum concretum. Of course, in those days, every epiphytic plant was called an Epidendrum, which just means it lives closely attached to a tree. The species correct epithet means ‘close together, compact’ and likely refers to the habit of the inflorescence, where the flowers grow in close clusters.
Our particular species has an almost worldwide distribution: it can be found in Asia from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, in Africa, Madagascar and neighbouring islands and in the New world from Mexico and Florida through the Caribbean and south to Brazil. From this distribution, by the way, you can see that it is a tropic to sub-tropic plant. It grows throughout the year without much rest and likes fertilizing during our summers. Actually, I put some cow manure in with the mix and it has grown very well this past summer.
The flowers of most of these plants of Pol. concreta are a bright yellow or green-yellow; only the ones from the Madagascar region can be orange to brown.
There are 13 species of Polystachya listed on Wildcatt – there are probably more. Up to now (fall 2002) there have been 12 hybrids listed, none of them with ‘our’ species, probably because it flowers are quite small, only 0.8 cm top to bottom. Some of the other species have flowers over two cm across. Perhaps we should get a few of those – if they also have a nice scent.
Pol. concreta is the type species for the genus, but because it grows in so many different places, the taxonomists are not certain that it is not hiding a few other species among its numbers. However, it has the distinction, according to my source, to present the most difficult and complicated chapter in the orchid kingdom.
Ingrid Schmidt-Ostrander - Canadian Orchid Congress