Species of the week: Neofinetia falcata 'Akausagi' (赤兎)

赤兎 — red rabbit. The flowers are pinkish-red. The spurs come in threes, and the upper two curl upward like rabbit ears. The cultivar name is literal.

# The triple spur

A normal Vanda falcata flower is about 3 cm across, white, fragrant at night, with one long curved spur of ~3.7 cm trailing behind.¹ ‘Akausagi’ has three spurs: the trailing one plus two more curling upward from the column. The three come every year, not just occasionally — the reason this clone is the one fukiran growers ask for by name.²

It came out of Syutennou (酒呑童子) seedlings. Propagated only by division — hence the rarity and the price.²

# The name

• Genus Neofinetia — H. H. Hu, 1925. Honors Achille Eugène Finet (1863–1913), a French botanist of Japanese and Chinese orchids. “Neo-” because an earlier genus Finetia already had the name.³
• falcata — Latin sickle-shaped, after the leaves.
• ‘Akausagi’ (赤兎) — Japanese for “red rabbit”. The same characters as Lü Bu’s legendary “Red Hare” horse from the Three Kingdoms — coincidental reuse of a stock “colour + animal” compound, not a reference.²
• Vanda falcata — Gardiner sank Neofinetia into Vanda in 2012 (Phytotaxa 61).⁴ Most fukiran growers and Japanese societies still use Neofinetia; Kew and POWO use Vanda.

# Where it’s from

Japan (Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, Yakushima, Tanegashima, Okinawa), South Korea, central China. Epiphyte on tree bark, lithophyte on rock; mid-elevation forests, dappled shade.¹ Carl Peter Thunberg collected the type on the hills above Nagasaki in the mid-1770s; published it as Orchis falcata in Flora Japonica (Uppsala, 1784).³

# How mine got here

Negie Orchids (Kiyoshige Negi), Japan, November 2020.⁵ Arrived near blooming size, several keikis already at the base. First flower the following spring — one inflorescence, three spurs (left panel of the hero). Repotted in spring 2025 into a white Japanese fukiran pot, moss-mound planting, calligraphy tag (right panel).

The single most expensive plant in the collection.

# Growing it

Year-round on the Genoa balcony, filtered sun under light shade. The Mediterranean winter (overnight lows ~5 °C, daytime 10–14 °C) sits inside the 3–13 °C winter range AOS and Travaldo report for the species.⁶¹ Summer days 25–32 °C, cooler at night from the sea breeze — close to the 26–31 °C / 19–23 °C envelope cited for habitat.¹

• Filtered light. Direct mid-summer Mediterranean sun burns the leaves.
• Heavy water in growth, dry between waterings. V. falcata runs CAM photosynthesis. The usual failure is root rot.⁶
• Long-fibre sphagnum in the traditional kokedama mound — tight at the core, looser at the surface.
• Outdoors year-round. Tolerates short dips toward 0 °C. Lives outside the highland cabinet — open-air day-length and temperature swings suit it better.

# Notes

• Pollination — nocturnal fragrance, long spur, white flower: a hawkmoth-pollination syndrome. Suetsugu, Tanaka, Okuyama & Yukawa (2015) recorded Theretra japonica and T. nessus probing the spurs of wild-type plants.⁷ Whether moths handle ‘Akausagi’ the same way is an open question — the cultivar sets seed by hand-pollination, and the triple-spur character is decorative, selected by eye.
• Fukiran (富貴蘭) — “orchid of wealth and rank”. V. falcata has been cultivated in China since the late Ming and in Japan at least since the Kanbun era (1661–1673). Edo-period tradition restricted the prized cultivars to the samurai and daimyō class; AOS reports that a specimen presented to a shogun could earn the giver an estate.⁶ The All Nippon Fuukiran Orchid Society now lists over 2,200 selected varieties, around 200 on its annual Meikan ranking.⁶

# Links

• POWO — Vanda falcata — accepted name, authority, distribution.
• AOS — Neofinetia falcata — cultivation overview and fukiran context.
• Travaldo — Neofinetia falcata care and culture — temperature, light, humidity targets.
• Negie Orchids — ‘Akausagi’ listing — source nursery; description of the triple-spur trait and Syutennou parentage.
• Suetsugu et al. (2015). European Journal of Entomology 112(2): 393–397 — hawkmoth pollination, DOI 10.14411/eje.2015.031.

Species of the week is a rolling series. Past entries under the species-of-the-week tag; per-species page with provenance + photos at /collection/species/neofinetia-falcata-akausagi-赤兎/.