I would like to express an opinion based on my observations and from talking with other hybridizers about P. stuartiana 'Larkin Valley' AM/AOS. It has been an outstanding breeding plant for many years, producing many fine hybrids, and it has been known to breed like a tetraploid. This plant originally came from Arthur Freed Orchids, and was sold to John Ewing Orchids who received the AM/AOS. It had the darkest plum red spotting to blotches on the petals and ventral sepals to the point it was almost solid color on the inner sides of the sepals. A few of us hybridizers do not believe this clone to be pure P. stuartiana. The reason is that Herb Hager and John Ewing made a sibling cross using 'Larkin Valley' with a white, not heavily marked clone. When I observed the cross blooming for the first time at Herb's nursery, he pointed out to me the variation in the leaf coloration; the leaves of some clones were mottled and others pure green. Some had rounder leaves than the typical pointed leaf of the wild-collected species. Another difference was that all those with non-patterned leaves had white flowers which were much larger than the spotted and patterned flowers. Herb's opinion was that one of the parents was not a pure species, and this opinion was shared by several other hybridizers. It still is worth using if you want lots of branching and many flowers, but in my opinion it is not a true species.