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Beautiful Mess
©Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. -- Botanists are calling it a spectacular find: It's the Phragmipedium kovachii, a brand new orchid discovered in the Peruvian Andes in May. "It's a rich, brilliant red purple. Big, round, well-shaped -- it apparently has no odor -- and one flower per stem seems to be the rule," said John Beckner, curator of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Orchid Identification Center in Sarasota. Fauquier County, Va., nursery owner Michael Kovach came upon it on a mountainside where an Indian family was selling flowers. On June 5, he walked into the Orchid Identification Center with a dried and pressed specimen. Researchers at the center immediately set about drawing, describing and naming the flower, with help from Ricardo Fernandez of the Museo de Historia Natural in Lima, Peru. The findings were published in the center's scientific journal, Selbyana, and posted on the center's Web site in June. "It has huge commercial potential. It already has the orchid world in an uproar," Beckner said. Not all of it is good. Other orchid growers are accusing Kovach of violating the Convention on International Trade Species, which forbids the trade or movement of certain plants from country to country. The dried specimen, which belongs to Peru, has been returned to the Museo de Historia Natural, and it is unclear when the plant will be available for research and breeding. Beckner said he believes that several nurseries in Peru now have the plant, and that one grower there may have obtained the country's permission to export it. Beckner, who has only seen the pressed specimen and pictures, said the flower is at least 5 inches wide, and can surpass 6 inches. "I don't know that I even touched it," Beckner said. "I just looked at it and said, 'Wow.' "
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