Hi Folks,
Firstly, Whimgrinder (nice name!) you can breathe easy. Contrary to what I had told Tony, when I went back through our correspondence I found we had released just a very few of the 'Helen' cultivar to the Distributor you bought your plant from so his honesty is not in question. In hindsight, this was an error of judgment on our part, when we realised that we would not be able to supply other Distributors too, due to low nursery stocks at the time. So he got lucky and I do not blame him in any way - it was entirely our misjudgement. Usually we do not release anything new until there are at least 120 plants of sale quality in stock and more on the way, so we can supply at least some to every Distributor who wants it. If any of our other US Distributors are reading this, I can only apologise and say that it won’t happen again.
However, on the upside, we can all watch Whimgrinder’s plant grow and presumably there will be a big demand for this cultivar when it's finally put on general release. It's fast and easy and will be readily available in the spring. We showed one a couple of weeks ago at the World Orchid Conference in Singapore which had a much larger pitcher than the one shown at the Chelsea launch with Helen Mirren. It’s a fabulous plant IMO, although some do not like the relatively floppy lid. A matter of taste I guess.
Thanks Tony for the clarification to everyone on the hybrids and cultivar thing. But to make it more complicated, Martin Cheek (noted Kew taxonomist) has told me that if we name something like
Nepenthes x Singapore GardenTech it is not proper. It should have Latin ending like
Nepenthes x Singapore Gardentechii or
Nepenthes x Singapore GardenTechiana and then it also should be described in Latin, Ugh!
We have a selected clone of
Nepenthes x Singapore GardenTech (the clumsy name “Singapore GardenTech” by the way came from the show at which this hybrid was first shown). After several years of testing, the Dutch have just this November released a selected clone we are calling
Nepenthes ‘Bloody Mary’.
But now I'm rambling..... it's an age thing :-(