Help with understanding orchid labels

[Clarevh]

Hi,

So in the past couple of months I have been taking care of about 40 orchids that my mother inherited from my grandfather. On both the labels and the orchid list I received, there is a date for when the plant was last reported and when the plant last flowered. But there are some additional numbers after the flowering date that I don't understand. They read like these examples:

06/12/13 '11 (31)
17/11/12 '97 (10)

Does anyone know what those two last numbers mean? I suspect they are a recording of the number of flowers in the brackets, but what about the number after the apostrophe?

[Anton]

Obviously had developed his own way of recording his plants, unless you can find book with the details, it could mean anything.

I use an App on my iPhone and iPad called Orchid Notebook where I can jot all the information about my plants in an easy to find manner.

This way, if I "fall off the perch" my wife can look up how much I paid for the plants and it will help her sell them, or give a base price if she wants the club to auction them on her behalf.
Anything the "prospective buyer " wants to know, she can readily look up as well.

[PaphMadMan]

Hard to know what anyone's shorthand code might stand for, but I think the most likely thing for '11 and '97 is a year, maybe year acquired. That would be a common shorthand year format at least. The numbers in brackets could be number of flowers, but that would make more sense if it was right after the flowering date.

[Clarevh]

I was wondering whether the '97 was the previous year that it had flowered, but that seems like a long time between bloom cycles and his orchids seemed to constantly be in bloom. Guess it will remain a mystery!

Going to check out that app Anton - at the moment I am just using an excel spreadsheet. I do a voice recording on my phone when I'm checking the orchids and go back to transcribe. That allows me to keep track of the growth of new leaves and die backs and root growth, so I can see which orchids are doing well and which may need their culture adjusting. I am also storing pictures of the blooms in that spreadsheet, so we know what the flowers look like, which will hopefully help with IDing some of the keikis that got mixed up. So far only 2 orchids have bloomed since they've been in my care, but a third is on its way so maybe by year end I will have a more complete database.

[Anton]

With Orchid Notebook you can add a photo of the flower, plant and a second one of flowers. I use the first photo to document a single flower, generally with a "clean" background, usually a black cloth, second one to document the whole plant in the pot to show the size, then the second flower photo to show a whole spike once all flowers open.

It also has a section describing the care of several popular species.

Also it contains details on watering conditions, temperature, where it is located in your orchid house, when it was potted /re potted, how much you paid for it, whether it is mounted or potted etc. So, as you can see, it is quite comprehensive.

Well worth the cost, I'd be lost without it now.

[-k-]

Could it be the year the plants were acquired?