Wow, nice close-up on that last shot! You can see each individual trichome.

That certainly looks a whole lot more like the real deal to me than that other glossy green thing that is being sold under that name (I think we've pretty much determined that the other one IS in fact a Neo). This one has the right form, and some scurf, but it also looks a bit bigger than what I remember my aculeatosepala being. Growing conditions? Species variation? All in all, I'm inclined to accept the ID as legit. Let's see if you can get it to flower!

Very nice, Mike! Do you know whether those plants were grown in the orchid nursery or were they harvested in the wild? Where ever they were growing, looks like the light levels were low and obviously the humidity was high.

What I found with my 'Aech aculeatosepala' is that the plant loves moisture - especially in the atmosphere. And the more moisture it gets, the more shade it requires! Getting too bright light in my shadehouse where the humidity is much higher than outside in my garden, the plant burns. But growing in the garden - hard - mounted high on a dead tree trunk with some direct sun during the hottest part of the day, it gets a more orange colour and does not burn. The very tips of the leaves become dry, though. Also growing hard, it grows VERY slowly, giving maybe one pup a year. In the shadehouse with more moisture, it grows like a weed like you said, Lisa. In about a year it has produced 5 pups which also produced pups and some of those have produced pups already!

And some of the pups in the shadiest position, look like want to become more 'scurfy'

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Japie