Chuckie

Working with elegans

2011-07-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

Cymbidium elegans 'Atlantis'

Midwinter is a time of conflicted emotions in a Cymbidium collection. The sudden and exciting onslaught of the autumn flowering plants, with their bright colours and fragrances, contrasts with the equally bright and floriferous burst of the spring flowers, now sitting as buds. The mid-winter lull can be quite distressing for some growers. This year has been particularly hard for many. The Autumn rush was particularly abundant. Unfortunately, the winter and spring flowering plants are running very late this year. The midwinter show of one of the local orchid societies a couple of weeks ago had only a handful of Cymbidium in bloom. Normally, there would be dozens of plants in flower for what is typically the start of the 'traditional' Cymbidium season. Nature really is wonderful at keeping us guessing!

One of the delights of the darkest, coldest months of the year is the lovely, Cymbidium elegans. The beautiful light to dark yellow or even peach-coloured flowers, positively glow in the subdued light of winter. The flowers could not be further from what most people view as a typical Cymbidium. The petals and sepals of this plant part just far enough to expose the lip and column, forming pendulous trumpets more reminiscent of a delicate, nodding lily or a yellow-coloured 'English Bluebell'. The base of the flower spike is upright to arching, the section containing the flowers being pendulous. Each flower spike produces up to 40 or so flowers. It is probably the only Cymbidium that is more noteworthy for the overall flower spike than it is for it's individual flowers. This is definitely a case of the whole equaling more than the sum of it's parts.

For a plant that is so beautiful, Cymbidium elegans, has been rarely used in hybridizing. All in all, it has been utilised 20 times in the past 110 years; 11 times as a pod parent, 9 times as a pollen parent. None of these plants seem to have gained any popularity despite their unique beauty. There are several new crosses on their way but it will be several years before we see the first flowers on these plants. This lack of popularity may be about to change!

One of the very early hybrids involving C. elegans is C. Forster Alcock (tracyanum x elegans)raised by J. Forster Alcock in 1909. This is one of those hybrids that would not have taken much thought. Both species flower at the same time and both are beautiful plants in their own right. The hybrid is pretty much what you would expect; a large leafy plant with large upright then arching flower spikes with high flower count. Interestingly, the flowers more closely resemble the elegans parent in colour and overall spike habit and tracyanum in openess of flower and robustness of plant. It has retained the fragrance of the tracyanum parent albeit not as strong. All in all, it is a very pleasant and highly decorative plant.

Cymbidium Forster Alcock

A more interesting and totally delightful hybrid is C. Ides of March (floribundum x elegans) raised by R. Vandyke of Valley Orchids in 1977. The cultivar 'Springtime' has been passed around specialist collections for years but has been, for the most part, dismissed. This is very surprising as it possesses everything you would want in a true miniature. The plant size is small, about 30cm, the spikes have numerous flowers, up to about 30-40 on a well grown plant and it is easy to grow. Even though it has been around for 30-some years it has never been used as a parent in any hybrid. This may be due to the fact that it has never been popular or even known to most growers. Hopefully, this little blog will prove to be the 'coming out' ceremony for this beautiful little debutante. I think it is a totally delightful little plant that deserves to be seen in all its glory!

Cymbidium Ides of March 'Springtime'

One of the more spectacular of the C. elegans crosses in flower at the moment is C. April Showers (Rincon x elegans). This lovely cross was produced in 1985 by that breeder of all things wonderful, Keith Andrew. It has to be one of the most inspired crosses. Who would think to cross a pink-flowered standard Cymbidium with and yellow-flowered arching-pendulous species with relatively small flowers with unconventional shape? Well, the result speaks for itself. I have two clones of this lovely hybrid; 'Elmwood' and 'Apricot Nectar'. 'Elmwood' has smaller, more open flowers on a modest-sized plant. 'Apricot Nectar' has much larger flowers with broader segments and more interesting colour. You pick, they are both very beautiful to me.

Cymbidium April Showers 'Elmwood'

Notice the dark pink edge to the midlobe and sidelobes of the lip.

Cymbidium April Showers 'Apricot Nectar'

Notice the much wider petals and sepals and blush pink overlay on the sepals.

Another C. elegans hybrid just coming out at the moment is C. Cariad (elegans x devonianum) raised by Keith Andrew in 1976. Cymbidium Cariad 'Plush' is probably the most popular first generation C. elegans hybrid. This fully pendulous little plant has beautiful starry, yellow flowers with a remarkable labellum marked by two large purplish patches on either side. In Melbourne, this plant is appearing in many collections, taking pride of place amongst it's larger and more conventional 'Pendulous' Cymbidiums.

Overall, C. elegans, strongly influences spike habit and to a reasonable degree flower colour. The drooping, trumpet shaped flower is not a strong characters and seem to be easily compensated for even in first generation hybrids. The arching flower spike is particularly attractive. The general floriferous nature of C. elegans hybrids, two spikes per bulb, make this elegant species a real or at least potential contender for breeding highly productive pot plants. Give these interesting hybrids a try. They are modest in size, floriferous and provide just that bit of contrast to the normal collection of Standard, Intermediate and Miniature hybrids.

Pleasant Monday Afternoon

2010-11-01T03:27:00.000-07:00

Today was my day off. It is Melbourne Cup Day tomorrow. By using only one of my leave days, I can get a four day weekend. This public holiday is based around a horse race The Melbourne Cup. This horse race is not any old horse race but 'The race that stops the Nation!'. Nothing like a bit of hyperbolic language. I grew up with horses. I got a horse for my 7th birthday, a filly named Princess. I think having to shovel horse s__t every day from the age of 7 until I turned 17 has permanently put me off horses. My dislike looking after horses could have been triggered by Princess throwing me off on my first attempted ride and biting me when I tried to feed her strawberries. I did laugh when she used to steal my fathers tobacco pouch out of his back pocket. She was a very clever horse. Don't get me wrong, I like horses but I will never again own one. I prefer orchids. They don't leave 'droppings'.

It amuses me that I would be heading to a rural store to pick up some supplies for my greenhouse. My parents used to drive me to the West Chester Rural Store to pick up hay, straw, molasses-soaked oats, chicken feed and laying mash. Today's trip was much different. First of all there was just one person in the car. Secondly, it was well over an hours drive to get to this rural store. This was a special trip and a special rural store. Monbulk Rural Store specialises in greenhouse supplies as well as the normal farm 'stuff'. On the way up I thought about Princess and the sights, sounds and smells of the West Chester store. I remember the smells in particular. Molasses oats held a particular fascination. The horse ate the oats, surely they were good enough for a seven-year-old?

My reverie came to a screaming halt upon sighting the CLOSED sign on the front door of the rural store. Dang, an hour and twenty minutes drive and nothing to show. Now it was another hour and twenty home. Hmmmm, what to do in the hills? The Dandenong Ranges is a wonderfully scenic area and very popular with tourists. Nearly every little town has a specialist bakery, deli and plant nursery. Hmmmm, eating and looking at plants. It was a tough assignment but I was up to it. Lets see, savory or sweet? Coffee and pecan pie would have to suffice. Such suffering.

Now, what plant nursery to look at? Too late for spring bulbs so how about alpine plants? Gentiana Nursery it is. Those boys certainly know how to grow a plant! Do I really need that blue Corydalis? No, not today. Lilium canadense? Yep, can't do without that. A couple of more Cyclamens for my collection? Why not, you can never have too many forms of C. coum. While many of the plants are beautiful, they are not really the love of my life.

The orchid twitch was getting to me. I rarely get over to this area. Why not visit one of the orchid guys. Thank goodness for smart phones. One quick phone call and down the road we go. Lunch first. Forget fancy food, orchids are more important. Quick sandwich and a drink and back in the car. Isn't it amazing when you are anticipating something? You can never get there quick enough.

Even though it is supposed to be the end of the Cymbidium season here in Melbourne you wouldn't have known it walking into the sales area of the nursery. What a riot of colour. There were some of the more widely known Cymbidiums there including the hybrids with the Australian native cymbidium species canaliculatum, madidum and suave. There were a range of the grex Phar Lap in full flower, notably the clones 'Geyserland', 'Apricot Gem/Glow' and the monstrous deep red 'Red Rider' . Appropriate really that a Grex named after a famous race horse should be in flower for Melbourne Cup Day!

The bench on the side of the sales area was strictly a display area, all the plants clearly marked NFS. This small area, next to the cash register, contained all the really interesting plants. Below are a few of the plants that caught my eye. They are not really my taste in Cymbidiums but you just can't walk by a plant that screams out at you. The first two are, to me, are bizarre. To some in the Cymbidium world they would be very precious. As the nurseryman said 'Any plant that produces the 'green stuff' is a good plant'. He wouldn't be getting my green stuff for these plants, even if they where for sale.

Cymbidium Tethys x sanderae

The plant above caught my eye first and then perplexed me when I saw the label. Tethys 'Black Magic' is a large spotty purplish red. Sanderae is considered by many to be a species, some question this. The flowers of sanderae are white with a pink suffusion and a large heavily red-marked labellum. It would appear that the sanderae parent has been totally dominated by the Tethys parent in the above cross.

George Formby
(Tethys X Esk Claret)

Another hybrid nearly totally dominated by the Tethys parent. Esk Claret contributes the red colouration. There was water on the flower, hence the shiny bits on the labellum.

(Electric Ladyland X Vogelsang) X Last Tango

While more conventional looking than the other plants this was a real standout on the display bench. The flower spikes were vertical in their lower half and abruptly arching in the upper half. What a colour and what a beautiful display. The Vogelsang hybrids are particular favourites of mine. I would have bought this one!

The visits to the cafe and nurseries were more than ample compensation for not being able to make a purchase from the rural store. I got to think about my childhood, had a good feed, saw some amazing plants and even brought a couple home. A good day really. Maybe it was more than a Pleasant Monday Afternoon. For the first time in my life I have entered a sweep on the Melbourne Cup tomorrow. I am praying that horse #22 does well!

Not one you see everyday!

2010-09-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

Cymbidium Musita X Vogelsang

Today was a photography day. It wasn't the best day as far as weather goes. Cold and windy outside with lines of clouds passing by. Actually, I should say the occasional line of sun passing by. I had the camera set up in the studio and would race in when a sunny patch arrived. I was going to work outside today but paperwork kept me in the warm and dry. Each sunny patch lasted about 5 minutes but that was enough to get a dozen plants photographed.

It was interesting taking the photos today. Sometimes the flowers look more interesting in the photographs and sometimes the other way around. One of the plants that made it into the studio today was a pendulous hybrid. This plant first started flowering about 2 months ago but decided it was going to flower again now. Many of the Cymbidiums, at least here in Melbourne, have funny flowering times this year. When it was pulled off the bench there was yet another spike just breaking the sheath. This is one prolific little plant. The flowers are not all that large, about 70mm across, but they are a fascinating colour. The colours are actually more eye-catching in real life. If you click on the above photograph it will go to a much larger size.

Yesterday, while visiting a nursery I spied a plant that made me think of a friend of mine in California. A picture was duly taken so at least he could see it, even if he couldn't own it immediately. When I got home I downloaded all the pictures from the nursery and pulled up each to name them and file them. When I pulled up the picture of the peloric hybrid for Joe, I had second thoughts about dismissing it as something I would not grow. Thankfully, there was time to go back to the nursery and pick it up for my greenhouse. This was one plant that didn't get really appreciated until it was viewed completely filling a 24" screen

Back to our mystery plant! Goodness, it is easy to get sidetracked. I was originally going to post the picture at the start of this blog on my Flickr account. Well, that was the case before the thought came to me that it had sufficient interest that it might qualify for another 'Guess the Hybrid' posting on the International Cymbidium Alliance web forum. This plant is particularly interesting because if you look really closely, you can see both of the parents in this plant. So here we go. Can anyone guess the hybrid?

SPECIAL NOTE

If you are reading this post you are undoubtedly interested in Cymbidiums. If this is the case, are you a member of the CYMBIDIUM SOCIETY OF AMERICA? If you are not a member, can I suggest that you join? It doesn't matter if you are in the USA, Australia, South Africa, Denmark or Azerbaijan. We can all be members! Plant societies worldwide, are suffering at the moment and need all the support we can give them. Already declining memberships have been even more severely impacted by the Global Financial Crisis. If you click on the hyperlink here or above it will take you to the CSA website. At the moment you have to print out a membership form and post it to them. This is a small price to keep an invaluable plant society going. Remember, it is not just the information you get from the Journal, the shows, the meetings and the web forum that is paid for with your membership. It is the long history, documents and photographs accumulated by the society over the years that you are supporting. Let us all help support the present CSA and ensure that it has a future and can maintain its past.

Cymbidium tracyanum

2010-07-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Atlantis'

I just love Autumn in my shadehouse. The cool dewy mornings. Fogs in the valley. Still air filled with the smell of decomposing vegetation. The smell of Cymbidium tracyanum wafting through the shadehouse, along the verandah and past the back door. The sweetly spicy smell of the Cymbidium contrasts with and compliments the other smells of autumn in the Australian forest. This smell signals to me the start of the main early Cymbidium flowering season. I know in a few weeks the frail looking but incredibly long-lasting C. erythrostylum will be blooming. It is also a reminder that it is time to plan my birthday dinner!

Cymbidium tracyanum is one of those species that can not fail to impress. It is a large and imposing plant. A well grown plant will bring ooh's and aah's from the uninitiated and the most hardened orchid buff. It's exotic looking flowers and fragrance are sufficiently intoxicating for everyone to be taken totally into it's spell even if only for a few minutes. Reality strikes when the size of the plant is contrasted with the growing space of the collector. Hmm, lets see, one specimen plant of C. tracyanum or ten 8 inch pots of other more restrained species or hybrids?

Of the larger-flowered Cymbidium species, Cymbidium tracyanum is one of the largest plants with the largest flowers. Plants are commonly about a metre tall with large pseudobulbs (up to 15cm tall) and long arching leaves (up to 1m long and 4cm wide). Flower spikes are usually up to a meter or so long and produced at an angle. In my plants, spikes are commonly disposed at a forty-five degree angle and gently arch from about midway. Other forms have flower spikes that are nearly horizontal or point up at a 60-70 degree angle and these spikes may or may not arch. Each spikes produces up to about 20 flowers and the flowers are commonly 10 - 15 cm wide and a little less high.

Cymbidium tracyanum was one of the early imports to the gardens of the west. It first came to the attention of the gardeners of a Mr. Tracy from Twickenham in England. I say 'first came to the attention of' because it was not an expected part of a shipment of what was meant to be C. lowianum. When it flowered, there was obviously a fair degree of excitement. It was immediately taken to the Royal Horticultural Society Orchid Committee and judged as being worthy of a First Class Certificate. It was named shortly thereafter in the Journal of Horticulture, and surprisingly, named and described a few days later in a competing journal The Gardeners' Chronicle. It was formally illustrated the following year in The Gardeners Chronicle. I can not image what it would have been like for the gardeners at Mr. Tracy's greenhouses when this plant flowered. Below is a picture of the plant that they first 'discovered' and that was awarded on the 9th of December 1890. This plant has been passed down through the generations and is still grown by many people around the globe.

Cymbidium tracyanum FCC/RHS

It is interesting to note, that at first, it was not clear where plants of C. tracyanum were coming from. Several plants showed up in shipments of C. lowianum and it was one of these shipments, from a known area, that alerted the collectors where to look. The third importation, with the known locality, did not flower until 1896. Upper Burma (now Myanmar) was the place to look. Thankfully, by 1900 plants flowered that were collected by a man named A. F. G. Kerr. He found these plants near Chieng Mai in Northern Thailand. It wasn't until 1940 that the actual habitat of C. tracyanum in the wild (Burma) was described by Francis Kingdon-Ward. His description of the habitat includes the phrases 'wet evergreen hill forests' and 'Growing in the fork of a tree overhanging a stream in a deep gully'. One can only imagine the sight of a fully mature plant of C. tracyanum growing high in a tree.

It always fascinates me that some people and even some botanists have difficulty identifying this plant. Granted, it is hard to decipher the finer details of a flower from a herbarium sheet. When I read that some botanists could easily confuse C. tracyanum and C. hookerianum from the herbarium sheets my immediate thought was how? Have you ever tried to press a cymbidium flower? They all end up looking about the same. Most pressed orchid flowers are a plain dark brown with all the subtleties of shape and colouration lost. There are however some very simple and clear features that separate C. tracyanum from all the other large-flowered species even when they are squashed and dried.

The first and easiest-to-tell feature of C. tracyanum that jumps out at you, even from a herbarium sheet, are the two callus ridges on the labellum that are densely covered in long transparent hairs. The labellum also has long hairs scattered all over it, particularly along the edges of the sidelobes. In all the pictures presented here you can easily see them. Some people refer to these hairy callus ridges as 'Toothbrushes'. An apt analogy. Cymbidium hookerianum also has hairy callus ridges and hairy sidelobes on the labellum, but the hairs on the callus ridges of C. hookerianum are few and far between. Hardly comparable to a 'toothbrush'. More like the first few hairs on the chin of a teenager!

The petals are a dead give-away. In the terms of the botanist they are 'falcate'. This literally means 'curved like a sickle'. This varies in degree between different forms of the species: some are only lightly curved, more like a scythe, others so tightly curved that they nearly make half circles. The spots and stripes of the flowers, while certainly distinctive, are shared by several other closely related species.

Another feature, not commonly preserved on herbarium sheets, that separates C. tracyanum from all of the other larger, cool-growing Cymbidiums is the upward-pointing roots. These roots are about 3cm long and form along the sections of the main roots closest to the base of the plant. These types of roots occur in several other Cymbidiums but mainly amongst the 'hard-leaved' tropical types. It is commonly thought that this type of root configuration helps the plant to catch falling organic matter or to provide extra air to the roots. Literally the Cymbidium equivalent of pneumatophores in mangroves or 'knees' in Swamp Cypress.

For any grower of C. tracyanum you would have to wonder how such a distinctive plant could be confused with any other Cymbidium. A couple of advantages a grower has is their sense of smell and the ability to see the plant in growth. Being complex animals that can process multiple stimuli at one time, we humans can easily and readily distinguish between various species with just a little practice. The fragrance of C. tracyanum is very distinctive: sharp, strong and spicy. It is a deep fragrance: very rich, complex and cloying. Once you smell it, it will stick in your brain. Of course, all the shape and colour of the flower is readily visible in a growing plant. A feature not apparent on herbarium sheets and not listed very often in the literature, is how the flower spikes are produced. Unlike almost all of the larger flowered cool-growing Cymbidiums, except for C. erythrostylum, C. tracyanum produces it's flower spike on the maturing new growth, before the pseudobulb is fully formed. The spike doesn't actually arise from the very base of the pseudobulb but from amongst the cataphylls (leaf-like bracts) or basal leaves.

You would think that a species such as C. tracyanum would have been used extensively in hybridization. Well in many respects it has been, but not as much as you might think. To date is has been figured as a parent exactly 100 times in first generation hybrids. It is more informative to see how and when it has been used. There was a flurry of breeding soon after its 'discovery' but once Cymbidium insigne came on the scene in 1901, with its tall spikes of white or pink flowers, C. tracyanum lost favour. The hybrids produced with C. tracyanum as a direct parent are generally what are called 'reptilian' in colouration. Lots of browns, yellows and greens with spots and stripes. Present day growers call these colours 'muddy' if they are mixed with white or pink. Oh the fashion of the orchid world, giving way to light colours and tall spikes in preference to interesting colours, fragrance and tons of 'personality'.

An interesting side note is that C. tracyanum has been used only 29 times as a pod parent (mother) but 71 times as a pollen parent (father). Some have suggested that there are clones that are fully or partially sterile as a pod parent. This may or may not be true. From what I can find out this may be gardening lore. Certainly, the disproportionate number of times it has held a pod compared to contributing the pollen, makes one pause and question.

The influence of C. tracyanum did not fully wain. There were second and third generation hybrids that proved to be spectacular. Some of these early hybrids, some now approaching 100 years of age, are still popular. Cymbidium Grand Monarch is probably more popular now than it has ever been. The hybrid C. Lustrous, is being re-introduced in to present day breeding programs. Even lowly old C. Doris, the stalwart of every Cymbidium collection in Melbourne, Australia, has been remade using selected parents. The results are far removed from the original cross and highly desirable in their own right.

Now you would think that many of the more complex hybrids created with C. tracyanum in their background would be spotted. Some are, many are not. The main features of hybrids with a high proportion of C. tracyanum in their ancestry are: early flowering, easy flowering, large flowers and a range of colours except for white. The classic shape of C. tracyanum tends to be dominant in first generation hybrids but is quickly lost in the second and third generation. Many of the early hybrids were in the yellow/green range but there are good examples of pinks and orange as well.

Unfortunately, there is a major fault with the early hybrids and indeed all first and second generation hybrids containing C. tracyanum. Although the flowers are beautiful on the plant, they tend to be a bit shorter-lived than hybrids produced from other species such as C. lowianum. The other fault, from a cut-flower growers point of view, is that the flowers wilt within hours of being cut. For some reason, the stems do not draw water fast enough to keep the flowers turgid. I guess we just have to content ourselves with growing them as potted specimens and enjoying them as is. Let me see, is there a problem with that?

Orchid growers being orchid growers are not content with just one 'normal' form of the species. Well at least this orchid grower isn't. As mentioned earlier C. tracyanum has been collected many times from the wild and from right across the range of the species. Like all wild-collected plants some are more attractive than others. Flowers vary in size and colour intensity. Some are more free-flowering than others, although all the ones I grow are amongst the easiest of Cymbidiums to flower.

Until recently most people selected the darkest forms they could find. Some of the older clones that were paler or had less spotting were thrown out in preference to the next darkest clone to come down the track. Some of these clones, such as 'Dark Boy' and 'Black Knight' and 'Red Knight' are incredibly dark red/brown with very little of the greenish/yellow base colour showing through. At the other end of the spectrum are clones such as 'Tamborine' and 'Randall' that more closely resemble the colours found in the 'average' wild plant. Interestingly, albanistic and albino forms of the species have found their way into cultivation. These forms go under the names of 'Alba' for the true albino and 'Albanistic' for an extremely pale form. In a recent book called The Genus Cymbidium in China, a species called C. gaoligongense was described. It is now widely recognized that this species is actually an an albino form of C. tracyanum. It is a clear yellow with a white labellum and orange-lined sidelobes.

Over the years interest has turned to procuring better and better forms of the species. Hybrids between selected clones have produced a range of colours and in many cases increased the size and number of flowers on the spike. It is really hard to say which of these intraspecific hybrids is the nicest. Each has a quality all their own. Below is a selection of various clones of C. tracyanum. You be the judge.

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Atlantis'

My friend Julian has been growing this plant for many years. It is a very robust grower that commonly produces two spikes from each pseudobulb. Last year his plant had 27 flower spikes on it. The plant was 1.5m across with the flower spikes taking it to well over 2m wide and 1.5 m high He was going to take it to the local show but could not fit it in the van. Mind you, even with help it would have taken 4 men to lift it.

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Jay Pruette'

This clone was a wild collected plant supposedly imported from Thailand. Unlike many of the other clones of C. tracyanum, the background colour of this form is green but fades to yellow just before the flowers die. I particularly like the reddish patch at the base of the petals and sepals. In real life, especially with the oblique autumn sun hitting it, this red patch just lights up.

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Randall'

This is the clone that I have had for about 25 years. It is the most rampant growing form that I have. Unfortunately, the flower spikes are generally produced at the same level or lower than the leaves. It needs a little bit of encouragement to display its flowers well in a pot. I can imagine that this form would be particularly attractive viewed from below when growing in a tree. The green mass of the leaves providing the perfect foil for the multiple spikes of flowers below. Paler flowered than many other clones but also larger flowered than many. This plant was brought back by a friend from a collecting trip to China.

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Royale' 4N

This is not my plant nor my photo! This plant is the result of a crossing carried out by Kevin Hipkin of Royale Orchids. This was a purposely bred intraspecific hybrid of two particularly nice forms of C. tracyanum. The resulting seedling were treated to convert them to tetraploids. One of the unfortunate things that happens with the 4N versions of C. tracyanum is that the typically 'sickle-shaped' petals tend to be a bit less so. On the up side, the intensity of the spotting on the labellum tends to increase.

Cymbidium tracyanum 4N (un-named form raised by Julian Coker)

This plant flowered in a group of seedling of the cross C. tracyanum 'F1' X C. tracyanum 'Albanistic' from Andy Easton of New Horizon Orchids. This cross produced some amazing looking plants but for my tastes they lacked some of the charm of the more wild-looking forms. My tastes are obviously my tastes. This plant has a legion of admirers including it's owner. Big fat stems and big fat flowers with amazing colour but alas, only about 12 flowers on a stem.

Other clones from the above cross turned out to be 2n. These varied in colour intensity and configuration. Many of them were beautiful in their own right but were again a step away from the forms found in the wild. It is interesting to see how these intraspecific hybrids accentuate different features found in the wild species.

Cymbidium tracyanum 'F1' X C. tracyanum 'Albanistic' 'clone 1'

Cymbidium tracyanum 'F1' X C. tracyanum 'Albanistic' 'clone 2'

Cymbidium tracyanum 'F1' X C. tracyanum 'Albanistic' 'clone 3'

Now the story doesn't end here! Although interest in using C. tracyanum as a parent declined markedly after WW1, there has been a recent resurgance in its use as a parent and capturing its qualities in second and third generation crosses. Kevin Hipkins in Australia is one of the leaders in this field although there are many others as well. These 'Children of Tracy' will appear in a future blog. Be prepared for some suitably 'dark' names. Some of the names of these hybrids are truely disturbing. Pywacket, Valley of Death, Death Wish, Road Rage and the soon to be named Ethanasia!!!

Cymbidium Kusuda Shining X Cymbidium erythrostylum

2009-12-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

Wednesday the 9th of December started fine. It was a relatively warm (55 F) and sunny day in Philadelphia considering it was the middle of winter. My flight back to Australia was not meant to take off until 6:15 so had plenty of time to enjoy a few last hours with my family. Got to the airport early and whizzed through security and had a delightful Chicken Curry in one of the concourse restaurants. In retrospect, maybe it was not as delightful as first perceived considering the after-effects! Six o'clock and everything fine according to the screens announcing departures. Unfortunately, there was no plane at the gate! At 6:15 when we should have been departing an announcement came over the loudspeaker that our flight would be departing 40 minutes late. Not a worry, the connecting flight in Los Angeles was to depart two hours after we should have arrived. On the plane and then another 40 minutes sitting on the runway waiting our turn to take off. What caused this delay? Across 2/3rds of the continental USA there was a severe winter storm, we in Philadelphia were sitting in a little pocket of good weather. Pity the poor people of Chicago who were suffering -19 F and high winds or Buffalo, New York who were buried under 2 1/2 feet of lake effect snow. To cut a long story short, instead of the normal straight-line flight from Philadelphia to LA we detoured via Montana adding another 1 1/2 hours to our flight time. When the diversion to Montana was announced it became clear that my flight from LA to Australia was going to leave without me.

I don't normally praise an airline but United Airlines handled the situation very well. A dozen or so people stood in the service desk line awaiting re-assignment. I was number 6. The less than happy lady before me was the epitome of the customer from hell, lots of screaming and crying and flapping of arms. She left a very unhappy customer. By the time I got to the counter the attendant was frazzled and I was trying my best to act like the most polite customer. The reward for my great acting efforts was a lovely room at the LAX Marriot and a very nice breakfast the next morning! What to do until the next flight at 10:30PM on the 10th? By good luck I had the phone numbers of George Hatfield in my cell phone (mobile phone to the Australians). The very happy voice on the other end of the line and the words 'I'll come down and pick you up and we can play orchids today' changed what could have been a dreary day into one of excitement and camaraderie! Within an hour and a half we were eating the most amazing hamburgers from In-and-Out and heading up the coast highway to Oxnard.

George and I spent a wonderful day exploring every plant in his greenhouses, finding the gems and discussing a range of very interesting topics. There were many plants in flower and thanks to George's quick thinking and a staple gun we rigged up a mini-studio so that I could take some pictures. Most of those pictures will be used in future posts but there was one particular cross that particularly took my fancy. Now you would be right in thinking that this cross would be meaningful to me because it is in the process of being named after me (my real name not my nom de plume). Thankfully, I do really like the plant and can't think of another cross that is so befitting of my tastes in Cymbidium!

So what is this cross? Cymbidium Kusuda Shining x erythrostylum. This cross was made by George Hatfield of Hatfield Orchids and named in my honour, after I correctly guessed it's parentage from an unlabeled picture taken by another friend Ha Bui. Isn't it wonderful to have such thoughtful friends? It is especially poignant considering that at the time, I only knew the two of them from an online forum and emails. I am not even sure they knew what I looked like. On second thought they may have reconsidered after catching a glimpse of my mug.

Kusuda Shining is that fabulous early season hybrid, bred by Andy Easton, that is proving to be a wonderful parent and sparking a whole line of breeding. Many of the hybrids directly derived from it are in the yellow/orange/red range but as you will see other colours are certainly possible. Within the grex there are various selections exhibiting a range of colours from deep chestnut to bright yellow, most with heavily marked red labellums. There is reported to be an albino form out there somewhere but I have yet to see this. Maybe someone reading this can post a photo somewhere?

Cymbidium erythrostylum is the famous early season white species that has been used extensively for breeding high-quality whites, although generally not in the first couple of generations after direct use. Interestingly, C. erythrostylum is not restricted to breeding whites. It is well known for breeding pinks and even turns up in the heritage of reds and browns and even the occasional green. The fault with erythrostylum, according to Rebecca Tyson Northen, is the fact that the petals point forward and enclose the column, a syndrome she calls 'rabbit ears'. While this creates a look much different to what we expect in conventional Cymbidiums this configuration provides a unique look to the flowers that is both elegant and distinctive. This look is inherited in first generation hybrids, although modified to varying degrees. While this look is not appreciated on the show benches of cymbidium societies it is very popular with some sectors of the general public who look for novelty or are from specific cultural backgrounds.

Just as a reminder, Cymbidium Kusuda Shining and C. erythrostylum are pictured below so that you can see what the parents are.

Cymbidium Kusuda Shining

Cymbidium erythrostylum

What is really interesting in this hybrid is the way the characteristics of the parent combine in each different seedling. The most obvious characteristic is the shape of the flower. More like the C. erythrostylum parent, being basically triangular with petals pointing forward, but this varies in the three forms pictured. The red and peachy cream form show this most markedly but it is still obvious in the pink form. the labellum is typical of what you would expect of a C. erythrostylum hybrid, a little on the smaller side, strong diffentiation of the sidelobes from the mid-lob, and sidelobes the embrace the column. The convergent callus ridges are also characteristic of first generation C. erythrostylum hybrids. It is interesting to note that in this case C. erythrostylum strongly influences the position and configuration of the red patterning on the labellum, which is generally arranged in lines and increases in intensity and density toward the edges of the labellum. Of course, the labellums on the paler flowers more closely resemble the C. erythrostylum parent and the red flower more closely resembles the C. Kusuda Shining parent, even to the point of having yellow base colour on the labellum and confluent red patches toward the edges.

Most interesting to me is the overall colour of the flowers. How is it possible to get pink, red, peach and light yellow from this cross? It all gets back to the actual colours in the parents! I emphasize the term actual colour as opposed to perceived colour. Cymbidiums, like many other familiar garden flowers, including Rhododendrons, Oleanders, Roses and Carnations have petals that are made of layers of cells, each layer having the possibility of containing different colours. As is the case with Rhododendrons and Azaleas, the underlying or 'base' colours of Cymbidium are white, yellow and green. Overlying colours are white, yellow, green and red (pink being diluted red). One petal, the dorsal petal in Rhododendron and Azalea and the labellum in Cymbidium, has the potential to have markedly different combinations of colours then the rest of the petals/sepals. Some plant physiologists think and in some cases have proved that colour inheritance in orchid labellums is quite separate to colour inheritance in the other flower parts (think of the Cattleya alliance).

If you look closely at C. Kusuda shining it is evident that the base colour of the flower is yellow overlaid with red spots. Cymbidium erythrostylum is of course sparkling white with a tinge of pink/red at the base of the petals and sometimes a flushing of pink on the backs of the petals and sepals. What we see in C. Kusuda Shining X erythrostylum are white, cream or yellow base colours variously overlaid with red creating the impression of peach/salmon, pink or red. You don't have to look too closely in this hybrid to see either the base colour or the overlay colour. If you click on the individual pictures you can see the photo at a larger size. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

George made a very interesting observation regarding the floriferousness of the three plants illustrated here. They were all first flowered seedlings in 6"pots. The pink one, that the majority of orchid society people immediately took to, based on a picture of the flower only, is in fact the least free-flowering of the three. The pink only had one spike on the largest plant of the three. The creamy-peach one had a couple of spikes but the flowers were more numerous on the spike and better spaced. Most fascinating though was the red one. The plant was the smallest of the group but this little powerhouse had 7 flower spikes all fighting for space and attention. It was positively bursting with buds and when it is fully expanded will make a real knockout plant. You can see from the final photo it is certainly the most attractive of the lot and dare I say has the best qualities for commercial development. What about the shape I hear you saying. The general buying public and others seeking novelty and interesting shapes in Cymbidium, care little for the formalized strictures of the judging panels of orchid societies. These non-orchid society orchid consumers look for colour, free-flowering, compact size and of course colour, colour, colour! Perfection of shape of the flowers alone mean little to the general consumer.

Cymbidium Kusuda Shining X erythrostylum

As a record of my special day in Oxnard, the timer was set on the camera and a little group shot taken of my friend and I and his wonderul hybrid. You can see by the smiles on our faces that we were having a great time. George is such a generous and great friend. I can't wait until we see each other again at the Santa Barbara Orchid Show. Did I mention that George is the breeder of the wonderful hybrid discussed in this blog?

George Hatfield (left) and Randall Robinson (right)

with a group of Cymbidium Kusuda Shining X erythrostylum

National Cymbidium Show - Melbourne

2009-09-07T02:26:00.001-07:00

Colin Gillespie's Stand
(note all the blue ribbons)

When a big show comes to town there is always a bit of a buzz in the air. I have fond memories of every February in my childhood because of the biggest show in town for me, The Philadelphia Flower Show. This was the one big outing of the year for me. Imagine, in the middle of winter in the northeast of the United States, being treated to acres of the most exotic plants gathered together in enormous displays, all in the comfort of a heated convention centre. All the great nurseries of the tri-state area would be there. Styer's Nursery, with their beds of forced hardy plants, flowering well out of season. The DuPont family with magnificent displays of massed tropical plants. Several of the local orchid nurseries always had stunning displays. These orchid displays were always my favourite.

At 12 years old, my Grandmother accompanied my mother and I to the Philly Flower Show. This was an eye opener for Grammy and even better that her grandson could show her around. This was also the year I was allowed to buy my first orchids. The previous year I had purchased a Pepperomia obtusifolia, but this year I graduated to Maxillaria variabilis, a white Phalaenopsis and a little Oncidium cheirophorum. The delightful thing about the Philadelphia Flower Show is that the sales area is nearly as big as the display area. Probably a hectare or more. What appeared to be hundreds of stalls offered everything from orchids to houseplants to exotic bulbs, seeds, trees and shrubs and an endless array of garden supplies and accoutrements. The greenhouses fascinated me the most. You could spend hours wandering around with the thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing.

On the 3rd to the 5th of September, the Cymbidium Orchid Club of Victoria hosted the biggest show in town, The National Cymbidium Show at the Springvale City Hall. While not covering hectares it is certainly large by Australian standards. For me, it held no less 'buzz' than did the Flower Show in Philadelphia. This was the opportunity to see a whole range of plants that I don't grow. It is also a great place to see magnificently grown specimens. My plants will never look like the winning plants in the show, but it is good to know that it is possible! Gives one something to strive for.

Have you ever seen the movie 'Best in Show'? It is a behind the scenes look at the workings of a dog show. The experience of the person that comes along to view the show could not be more different to the experience of those involved behind the scenes. The spectator sees beautifully groomed and presented dogs and happy smiling faces on the trainers. Behind the scenes it is all intrigue and skullduggery. I wondered when I walked into the national show if there was any truth in the movie and if it translated to the orchid world. Certainly the plants were all perfectly groomed and the growers all had happy smiling faces. I think there was a difference here, the people were actually talking to each other and milling around in ever-changing group configurations. This group of exhibitors was actually not conforming to the stereotype portrayed in the movie. Then again, these are plant people, the gentler, kinder souls of the world.

One can't help but be sucked into the excitement of a show. Even if you would never grow many of the plants you can't help but admire the exquisite beauty of the specimens so lovingly cared for and presented. My original aim of this post was to show a perfectly chronicled account of the show but this did not happen. There is no way that all of the winners could have been listed and photographed. Equally hard for me would have been to list all the winners. Actually, this is a convenient excuse for my lack of record keeping. I spent hours taking pictures of the plants and carefully recording their names but failed to record their awards or their growers! A few names of the growers come to mind but I hope they forgive me if their names are spelled incorrectly or I wrongly attribute a plant to them. I tried to check all of the orchid names for the correct spelling but inevitably some will be wrong. Please let me know. Can I blame the labels on the plants?

For me the show was a great place to see what people are growing and showing and to get photos of plants that will never be found in my greenhouse. Above all though, it was a place for me to catch up with my friends from the web forum, old friends and a few new friends that I met over the three days. Well, the plants lived up to expectations and what a social time was had. Shame my wallet is suffering from withdrawal. Nothing went into it all weekend and everything came out.

The proviso of not singling out winners, mentioned above, will be put on hold for the most outstanding display at the show. The grower? Colin Gillespie. Wow, can this guy grow orchids. His plants are like my plants but on steroids. Everything about them is huge and absolutely perfectly formed without a blemish to be seen or a leaf or petal out of place. Alright, his plants are nothing like my plants. Colin is right up there with the best growers in the world and deserves every award he gets. The degree of care and dedication this man shows is to be commended. Come to think of it, it would be hard to find a Cymbidium grower anywhere that could surpass him.

Colin Gillespie's Stand

(Notice all the blue ribbons)

Cymbidium Valley Spash 'Awesome'
A deserving Grand Champion

For the most part, I will let the show and more especially the plants, speak for themselves. The goal of the photography session was not to take pictures of just the winners. While there are winners included in the photos most are just plants that caught my eye or had a special quality about them. They are not even representative of what was at the show. There where so many plants the line had to be drawn somewhere. Basically, I started at one point and just moved through taking pictures at whim until both of my batteries ran out. I couldn't include them all here but will include some in future posts. I hope you like them.

Cymbidium Club of South Australia

(A display of a hundred or so cut spikes. Wayne Bayliss wins best cut spike)

The Central Display area

Terry Poulton's huge tower of flowers.

Another great grower.

Cymbidium Zumma Spring 'Pure Magic'

Cymbidium Valley Splash 'Touch of Pink'

Cymbidium Templestowe Charm 'number 1'

Cymbidium Templestowe Charm 'number 2'

Cymbidium Templestowe Charm 'Matthew'
(This plant caused a great stir. How much did they want to pay for it?)

Cymbidium Spicy Kahn 'Comet'

Cymbidium (Portuguese Passion X Memoria Merv Dunn)

Cymbidium (Paradisean Bullseye X devonianum)

Cymbidium O'Beaston

Cymbidium Ned Kelly 'Cabernet'

Cymbidium Midnight Muffet 'Vivid'

Cymbidium (Memoria Vernell Jenson X Alexandra Beauty) 'Zach'

Grown by Terry Poulton

Cymbidium (Lunikera X Allumination)

Cymbidium Lumines

Cymbidium Kiwi Devonport 'Touch of Class'

Cymbidium Kimberly Splash 'Tee Pee'

Grown by Terry Poulton

Cymbidium Kelly's Winter 'Golden Sovereign'

Cymbidium Kalahari Pepper 'Karen'

Cymbidium (Janis Lin X Anna Szabo) 'Number 2'

Cymbidium (Hazel Fay X Wallacia) 'Bengal'

Cymbidium Havre Des Pas 'Trinity'

Cymbidium (floribundum x Ngaire) 'Orange'

Cymbidium Flaming Pepper 'Tee Pee'
Another Terry Poulton plant. Magnificent colour!

Cymbidium Drouin Masterpiece 'Renae'

For me the most interesting intermediate in the show.

Cymbidium (Coraki Advent X Lunar Glades) 'A-Stounding'

Cymbidium Bulbarrow 'Tepus'

Cymbidium Alexanderi 'Fine'

This one caught my eye from across the room.

The mystery of the Grand Monarch

2009-07-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'
(RHS image)

Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'

In real life.

In the early years of orchid registration by the Royal Horticultural Society all new crosses were treated as horses are today; all crosses had their birthday as the 1rst of January of the year of their registration. One other little quirk of these early years of registration was the order in which the parents were listed. Unfortunately, in the early years species used in a cross were put in alphabetical order, regardless of their contribution. In recent times the Pod Parent (Mother) is listed first and the Pollen Parent (Father) is listed second.

Cymbidium Grand Monarch was registered in the same year it received an award, 1931. On the 24th of November 1931, McBean's exhibited a plant of C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'. At this November meeting, the judges decided to give it an Award of Merit. Interestingly, the plant was a first-flowered seedling and had one spike of 10 flowers. One wonders what award this plant would have received if the grower had waited a year or two. The flower count on an individual spike would not have increased, due to the influence of the 1-flowered grandparent C. eburneum, but it may have had several spikes that would have made an impressive display.

It always amazes me what qualities make a plant worthy of keeping in cultivation. Many apparently fine plants are seen for a couple of years and then disappear from showbenches and collections. Cymbidium Grand Monarch has been in continuous cultivation since its introduction and has actually increased in popularity as the years have gone by. From 1931 until 1956 C. Grand Monarch was completely ignored by the hybridizers but gained popularity in its own right. Why? Here was a large flower on a compact plant that had interesting colour and fragrance. Why did it take 25 years for the first hybrids to be made using this fascinating plant?

Between 1956 and 1989 a total of 25 hybrids were made using C. Grand Monarch; 11 times as a pod parent and 14 times as a pollen parent. Surprisingly, not many of these hybrids have gained any recognition. Where they bad? Did they come in a period when clear, bright colours were the flavour of the day? Probably the most famous of the progeny of Grand Monarch is the beautiful green C. Sicily (C. Baldur x Grand Monarch). Other potentially interesting hybrids that I would love to see are Grand Azi (C. Alexanderi x Grand Monarch) and Grand Vizier (C. goeringii x Grand Monarch). Some of the hybrids, judging only by the parents, where obviously very speculative crosses and were probably not well thought out (read ugly).

The origianl plant of C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum' proved very popular with particular groups of people. The English and Scottish treasured the plant because of its hardiness, compact growth, free flowering nature, large flowers and fragrance. A powerful combination. The Californians liked it equally well, for the same reasons the English and Scots liked it. Australia, being part of the Commonwealth came under the spell of C. Grand Monarch after plants found their way here in the 1950's.

Although plants of C. Grand Monarch were introduced before the 1950's by the 'Brits', it was actually plants introduced by the Italians that most strongly influenced the popularity of C. Grand Monarch here in Australia. Mass migration of Italians to Australia in the 1950's brought many cultural changes to Australia, particularly the finer things in life like food, wine, plants and a well developed sense of fun and continuity of culture. Many of the migrants brought reminders of the 'Home Country'. One of these reminders was the plant under discussion here. This strong emotional tie ensured that not only was the plant treasured by the original owners but passed on to others in the same community as an attempt to re-establish a the old country in a new homeland. Amongst the general public, C. Grand Monarch has gained the rare honour of being one of those plants that has actually retained its cultivar name in the common name. It is called The Grand Monarch Orchid, just as Rosa 'Peace' is called The Peace Rose or Acer platanoides 'Crimson King' is called Crimson King Maple. For an orchid to be identified by the wider community by it actual cultivar name is a very rare and special occurrance.

My first encounter with C. Grand Monarch was while studying at the Royal Horticultural Societies Garden at Wisley in England. The collection of plants in that orchid collection had some very fine plants, many of them old hybrids and species. Three of the plants that I fell totally in love with were C. elegans, C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum' and Cymbidium Caroll (C. Alexanderi x eburneum). It was such a disappointment to have to leave the orchid collection at the RHS. Thankfully, my move to Australia meant that a ready supply of C. Grand Monarch was available. But was it? Many of the plants I came across in Australia were not the same as the plants seen in England. Occasionally, a plant would appear that matched the English plants. At one local orchid show there were three distinct plants all exhibited under the name C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'. Being a botanist, this situation was intolerable and bothered me to the core. Never one to shirk a challenge, I set about working out what was what.

Lets start with what goes in to making C. Grand Monarch. The parentage of C. Grand Monarch is C. hookerianum x C. Wiganianum. Now, C. Wiganianum is a primary hybrid between C. eburneum and C. tracyanum. This is good, there are only three species involved; hookerianum contributing 50% of the genes, eburneum and tracyanum 25% each. Problem 1, there are various forms of each of these species, with one of the forms of hookerianum being particularly spotty (var. punctatum). The variety punctatum of C. hookerianum is not recognised as a true variety but is still recognised as a cultivated variety or CV. This would mean that it is written as C. hookerianum 'Punctatum'. First challenge? Get a plant of C. hookerianum 'Punctatum'. Thankfully, this was relatively easy. There are some fine correctly labelled plants in choice collections around the world. My plant was sourced from a very reputable grower in Tasmania. When the plant flowered I realized that one of the spotty green plants I saw around the traps was C. hookerianum 'Punctatum. One spotty green Cymbidium down several more to go.

Cymbidium hookerianum 'Punctatum'

Photo by Dr. Susan Bevan

Two more hookerianum things turned up at different shows at opposite ends of the state of Victoria. The first one was exhibited by Lois Barber at the Ararat Show. It had a Blue Ribbon on it by the time I saw it. It was the centerpiece of her display. The plant was large and well grown, half a dozen spikes each with about 20 flowers. I was in love. It was green and a little spotty at the base of the petals but a bit more wavy than what I knew as Grand Monarch. Not being one who is shy, the question 'have you got a division you are willing to sell, came out of my mouth right after she served me tea and scones in the cafeteria. She sent her husband home to get one. A few dollars later and two plants heavier, I was the proud owner of C. Erica Sander (hookerianum x Pauwelsii). Oh well, not Grand Monarch but a stunning plant none-the-less.

Cymbidium Erica Sander
N.B. The identity of this plant has been questioned by an international authority. Proceed with caution!

The next plant to turn up was not a Grand Monarch either. It was the very common C. Lowio-grandiflorum (C. hookerianum x lowianum). Again, a very beautiful plant but not the green I was after. It was sold to me out of flower as C. Grand Monarch 'Equisetum'. Now the true name should be 'Exquisitum'. The name Equisetum is the generic name of the Horsetail plant. An easy mistake to make. Putting the wrong name on the wrong plant, unfortunately, is also an easy mistake to make.

Cymbidium Lowio-grandiflorum 'Clearview'

Ok, lets get back to the spotty C. hookerianum hybrids. Now that we have C. hookerianum 'Punctatum' out of the way and a couple of unspotted green hybrids, that leaves us two potential candidates. The first is easily disposed of as a potential candidate for Grand Monarch status. Then again maybe not so easily disposed of. Cymbidium Rosefieldense is a primary hybrid between C. hookerianum and C. tracyanum. This plant is by far the plant most commonly sold as C. Grand Monarch. Rosefieldense regularly appears on ebay and at many orchid shows as Grand Monarch. Nice as it is it is not the genuine article. Rosefieldense was registered and awarded an AM by the RHS in 1912. More recently, improved forms have been made. I have way too many plants in my collection of Rosefieldense, all but three purchased as C. Grand Monarch. Thankfully, the plant is extremely popular, a rampant grower and flowerer and is easy to sell.

Cymbidium Rosefieldense

We finally get to the genuine article, C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'. As mentioned before this is a hybrid between hookerianum and Wiganianum. Let us finaly look at the species that make up this hybrid. Cymbidium hookerianum we have already seen. Cymbidium Wiganianum is a rarely seen but beautiful plant in its own right. The one parent of Wiganianum, C. eburneum, is the well known Lilac-scented Cymbidium. This refined species usually produces but one flower on a stem but that one flower is a stunner. Mostly white, or with a blush of pink, and the most intoxicating fragrance. Cymbidium tracyanum on the other hand is the real 'Masculine' member of the Cymbidium genus. Robust, chunky leaves and spikes with big, bold, dark flowers and a deep rich fragrance. Cross these two divergent species together and you get a delicate green with some spotting and three-day growth on the lip and reeking of cheap aftershave. I have to thank Ed Merkle for supplying me with the wonderful pictures of C. Wiganianum and the description of him having to drive for hours with the car air-conditioning on refresh to keep the smell of C. Wiganianum at bay.

Cymbidium eburneum
crossed with

Cymbidium tracyanum 'Atlantis'
Produces

Cymbidium Wiganianum Photo Courtesy of Ed Merkle

Now you would think that the story would end here. This all makes sense and it is all very straightforward. When you deal with humans nothing ever goes to plan. You can argue until you are blue in the face and some people will just keep coming back and saying 'no you're wrong, my plant is a Grand Monarch'. Well for those who do not believe there is only one thing to do; put the plants next to each other and take a photo. So here they are, Rosefieldiense and Grand Monarch, cheek to jowl.

Cymbidium Rosefieldense (top flower) Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum' (lower flower)

There are some real and clearly visible differences between Rosefieldense and Grand Monarch. The main differences are:

Rosefieldense
Darker Green
denser/smaller spots
all segments narrower/shorter
flower about as wide as tall
Calli white with long hairs

Grand Monarch

Whitish Green

Fewer/larger spots

All segments broader/longer

Flower wider than tall

Calli yellow with short dense hairs.

Just so you can see for yourself, there are a series of photos of the labellums and calli of all the species and hybrids involved in the hybrids Rosefieldense and Grand Monarch. The key here is to look at the calli on the labellum. There is no way to get yellow calli from a direct cross of hookerianum and tracyanum (Rosefieldense). Alternatively, you can only get a yellow callus with short hairs by introducing eburneum into the mix.

Cymbidium hookerianum
crossed with

Cymbidium tracyanum
produces

Cymbidium Rosefieldense

Cymbidium eburneum
crossed with

Cymbidium tracyanum
produces

Cymbidium Wiganianum
Then crossed onto

Cymbidium hookerianum produces

Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'

The definite genuine article.

Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'

For years I have been trying to find genuine, disease-free plants of C. Grand Monarch. There are plenty of the genuine article around but not many of them are disease-free. Thats what happens when Stella gives a plant to Rose, who gives a plant to Mariska. I did manage to get a sprouted backbulb from a local grower after pestering him for 5 years. It lived exactly 5 months in my collection before being taken out by 47 degrees Celsius on the 7th of February. I resigned myself to another 5 year search. When I was wandering around my friends greenhouse on the weekend a plant caught my eye. He said, "what is that flowering, another Rosefieldiense?"I took one look at it and knew what it was. Cymbidium Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum'. It was in his son's section of the greenhouse. Not only was it the genuine article it was correctly labelled. After testing, it proved to be virus-free. When we talked to his son he mentioned that he probably had a few of them. Wow, going from desperation to winner in a matter of seconds! Now there is a small plant of C. Grand Monarch 'Exquisitum' sitting alongside some of my other 'Vintage' beauties. What a lucky man I am.

Guess the Hybrid 2 - Parents Found!

2009-06-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

I can finally announce that the parents of my Guess the Hybrid blog have been found! The parents are C. Sue and C. Summer Pearl. A quick look at the lineage shows that this cross is a bit incestuous! On the Sue side, C. Peter Pan is the father and C. Showgirl the mother. Peter Pan and a Showgirl? Sounds saucy enough. On the Summer Pearl side, C. Peter Pan is the mother and C. Trigo Royale is the Father. So here we have a hybrid that is half C. Peter Pan just like it's parents! Plants are so indiscriminant with who they mate and in what role.

Cymbidium Summer Pearl

Cymbidium Sue 'Maidstone'

Cymbidium Sue X Summer Pearl

The smaller of two spikes produced
on this first-flowered seedling.

At the moment in the northern hemisphere, Cymbidium flowers are rare. There are a few hybrids and species that flower at this time of year but the main season is well and truly over. Time is at a premium as growers busily repot and spend the majority of their time feeding, watering and keeping critters off their plants. Of course summer is also the time to catch up with family, take holidays and enjoy the weather. Well from what I hear about the east coast of the USA at the moment there is not too much weather to be enjoying!

We here in the southern hemisphere are right in the middle of our Cymbidium season. The ultra-earlies and many of the earlies are finished or finishing and the midseason plants are exerting their influence. We are in Cymbidium Heaven at the moment. Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the staking and grooming. Oh, and taking photographs!

There is a bit of a down-side to the differences in seasons between north and south, especially on the activity on our web-based Cymbidium forum. Most of the members of this web group are from the northern hemisphere. A strong contingent of us are however from the southern hemisphere. At this time of year, we southern hemisphere members are a bit lonely as most of our friends are off doing other, perhaps more interesting pursuits. We l'eft-behind' members try to do all sorts of things to try to encourage our northern friends to pay us web visits.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of the little 'games' that we play on the web forum is guess-the-hybrid. George is particularly good at coming up with plants that stump most of the members. Many of these plants are first-flowered seedlings. It is always fascinating to see what the result of a cross is and then work out what the parents are. As with most breeding programs, not all the progeny behave as they should, there are throwbacks, freaks, novel combinations that produce unusual results and sometimes just the odd strange occurrence.

The plant pictured above is my latest contribution to the guess the hybrid game. The clues are:

The plant is flowering now, June in the southern hemisphere.
Both parents have been mentioned in previous posts of mine in 2009.
The plant has bolt upright spikes with about 8-12 flowers (8 on the spike pictured).
The plant would be classed as an intermediate.
The parentage would suggest a modicum of warmth tolerance.
The colour is not what you would expect from crossing the two parents.

I hope all of you in the northern hemisphere enjoy this little beauty. When it first came out its full beauty was not appreciated. The true qualities of this plant emerged only after it was brought inside, photographed and then left on the kitchen table. Five weeks later it is still going strong. The smell is almost to the point of overpowering. The morning sun makes the colours sparkle. The subtlety of the colour combinations coupled with the fragrance reminds me of a beautiful Frangipani I recently saw in Adelaide. I am so glad that the advice given to me by a friend, to throw this plant on the compost bin, was not followed. Rightfully so! He now wants a piece of the plant. I think he will be waiting a long time.

Orchid in an unguilded cage

2009-06-17T01:19:00.000-07:00

June in this part of the world is one of the most magical of times of the year. Days are short but spectacular. The sun, being at a low angle in the sky, casts the most amazing light over the landscape. The air is filled with humidity. On still, clear nights, heavy dews form and rivers of fog flow down the valleys from the mountains. If the night is lit by a full moon you can see the roiling of the currents in these rivers of white. Actually, you can only see them from the hilltops. Those in the valley are shrouded in the fog. On various nights the depth of the fog rivers vary. On average they fill half the valley leaving the hilltops exposed like islands. You can tell the average fog level by the vegetation that occurs above and below the midpoint. The species composition of these two vegetation types is radically different. Different trees, different shrubs and different wildflowers.

The vegetation of the region is partially dictated by the rivers of fog. The temperature in these fog rivers can be several degrees Celsius cooler than the exposed hilltops. My friends who lives in the flow of one of these fog rivers commonly experiences temperatures up to 10 degrees C. cooler than my place. Frost is common at their house and almost non-existent at mine. Last year they had 40 frosts, we had one. Burt and Sue only live a couple of hundred metres away! You can see their house in the picture below. The ridgeline of their roof is that little bright bit on the left of the photo.

Fog River
(just after sunrise)

On the high dry hills above the fog rivers an abundance of plants thrive. Plants that would die in the frost and humidity of the valleys. Even though these hilltops are crispy-dry in the summer, they have reasonable rainfall in the winter. The Geophytic plants thrive here using their strategy of having underground storage-organs to collect the goodies when they are available and retreat back underground when the times get tough. Several totally unrelated plant families use the geophyte strategy on our little hilltops. Orchids, Lilies and Sundews are the main participants in the seasonal ritual of hide and seek. Pre-eminent of these three groups is the Orchids. Over 55 species occur in just 160 hectares of what most people would think was pretty scrappy dry forest. One of the first species to flower in Autumn is the Tiny Greenhood (Pterostylis parviflora). With flowers less than 1 cm long and the tiniest of leaves it is really hard to see these little devils amongst the jumble of dead leaves and twigs that blanket most of the ground.

Tiny Greenhood (Pterostylis parviflora)

On winter mornings when the fog rivers are flowing, the animals, ever sensible beings, head for the warmer hilltops to bask in the morning sun. Kangaroos graze until the sun is well up and then snooze away the morning sunning themselves. The groups of little twittery birds come up for their morning baths and a bit of breakfast. I should be correct here, these feathered flocks are guilds of unrelated passerine (perching) birds. The groups contain upward of 30-40 individuals of about 10-12 different species. The Tree Creepers hunt bugs under the bark of the trees, starting from the base and working upward. The Sitellas eat the same food but start at the tops of the trees and work down. The Wagtails and Fantails, being flycatchers, do acrobatics as they catch their food in-flight. Buff-rumped, Yellow-rumped, Brown and Striated Thornbills pick invertebrates from the branches and leaves. The melodious tones of the Grey Shrike-thrush ring out after each morsel is consumed from amongst the leaf litter on the ground. The mad twittering mass arrives suddenly, hangs around until everyone has had their bath and in a flash are off to depopulate another area of its critters.

The late arrival, usually by mid-morning, are the White-winged Choughs. They really do deserve their nickname of Larrikins of the Bush. These highly social birds can not do anything on their own and appear to take nothing seriously, except when they launch raiding parties to steal another groups fledglings. Choughs, both young and old, play with their food, are messy eaters and are real gluttons. A Chough will eat just about anything including mouldy bread, compost, any animal matter they can get their beaks into and just about any part of any plant. The birds are real survivors. Oh, I forgot to mention, they show little fear of humans.

Some of the favourite foods of these comical Choughs are the tubers of our beloved geophytes the Orchids Lilies and Sundews. The strategy used by the plants to store carbohydrates provide convenient little packages of concentrated nutrient, ripe for the picking if you can find them. The life strategy of the Choughs is similar to the familiar domestic Chicken; scratch, peck, scratch, peck, dig with beak, peck, scratch. The normal group size of this bird is about 8-12 individuals. A group of this size methodically working through the bush can pretty much collect almost all of the tubers of the orchids in an area that attracts their attention. After they have intensively worked an area they move on.

White-wingd Choughs (Corcorax melanophamphos)

Now a population of 8-12 birds working 50 hectares would be about normal for our area. At this density the plants and invertebrates of the area would have time to recover between despoilings. Many of the geophytes in the area are clonal in nature and form huge colonies by sending out numbers of daughter plants from the the mother, similar to the growth habit of a strawberry but with the runners under the ground. Beth Gott, a famous ethnobotanist, studied recovery rates of greenhood orchids after human harvesting. People find the tubers of orchids yummy as well. Beth found that she could remove half of the tubers of a colony each year without effecting population numbers. The numbers of tubers one year later would be back to where they were before harvest! This didn't allow for expansion of the colony but did not send it toward extinction.

Humans and Choughs go together really well. Choughs are opportunists and humans are wasteful and like to have wildlife around them. When this area was developed, humans moved into the habitat of the Chough. Now with many species, mixing with humans disadvantages the animal. Choughs exploited the opportunity and their numbers increased. Group sizes reached 30 or more members and groups could be supported half the area of the original 8-12 birds. How is this? What is going on here? In short, compost bins and purposeful feeding. Everyone had an open compost bin. This provided a nice daily supply of kitchen scraps and a big dump of stale bread and refrigerator cleanings once a week after the shopping. A few supposed nature lovers enjoyed the humanlike behavour of the Choughs that involved lots of displaying, grooming, napping, squabbling and playing. How to keep them around? A daily feed of bread, wheat or oats.

Problem. What happens when you quadruple the population of an omnivore and then stop their supplemental food supply? They revert to their natural food. The minimal impact they used to have on the orchid population on our little hill turned into a full-on assault and pillaging. When one of the neighbours who daily fed sacks of bread to the Choughs moved out, the orchid population plummeted.

Being an endangered species it was not possible to control the Choughs through direct methods. How to you re-balance an out-of-balance species? We used the multipronged approach. Put simply, covered compost bins, no feeding of Choughs and protect the Geophytes from predation. Unfortunately, this was going to be a long process and there would be further losses of the orchids. Fifteen years later and the populations of Choughs are getting back to their original numbers. This may have been helped by the ten years of drought we have been experiencing. Another negative side effect is the bushland is littered with wire cages, not to keep the Choughs in but to keep them out. The orchids are the ones in the cages.

Wire exclosures protecting colonies of orchids

Within the cages, away from the digging beaks of the Choughs, the orchids thrive and bloom. These delicate little plants, many of them only centimeters tall, carpet the ground inside, but are scattered in ones and two outside the cage, usually with their tubers firmly buried in a crack in a rock or beneath a dense tuft of grass. The fact that they are starting to show up outside of the cages is an encouraging sign. The 'escapees' are a new phenomenon, only appearing in the past few years and corresponding to the drop in Chough numbers.

Nicholls Greenhood (Pterostylis sp. aff. striata)
Inside the cage they thrive.

One of the orchids that occurs in these cages is an undescribed species of Greenhood Orchid that flowers in Autumn. It has gone under various names in the past in an attempt to shoehorn it into an existing described species. It has been called Pterostylis alata, P. striata, P. sp. aff. alata and P. sp. aff. striata, usually with an area description afterwards (e.g. Northeast Melbourne Foothills) . It is presently being formally described and named after a famous orchidologist who wrote the seminal book on The Orchids of Australia.

Flowering well under the cage.

Rosettes growing densely in moss under the cage.

Rosettes are barely 2 cm across but the leaves are
beautifully reticulated with wavy edges.

Several years ago a small colony of Nicholls Greenhood re-appeared after many years of absence. Instead of racing home and grabbing one of the normal wire cages to protect the plants I decided to try something different. This time I took an old dead shrub and placed it over colony. Just enough protection that it would make it difficult for the Choughs to want to bother moving a dead shrub. Leaves are easy to move when you have a beak but not branches. There were three plants when the colony was found four years ago. Three years ago there were 11, two years ago 35, last year 62 and this year I stopped counting at 100. I reckon there are nearly 200 now. Finally an example of expansion not just holding ground. The plants are not as densely packed as the plants in the cages but the individual plants are nearly twice as large. The leaf little builds up faster outside the cages and may alter the distribution of the species within a given population.

Free at last!
Outside the cages.

Looking all happy and perky,
obviously enjoying freedom.

While it is encouraging to see plants escaping from the cages it would be premature to rejoice too much and free the prisoners from their jail. These cages will for the foreseable future be necessary until the plant numbers recover sufficiently to allow natural predation by the Choughs. In the meantime we celebrate little victories.

Ushering in Winter with a blush of pink!

2009-06-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

You know winter is approaching when the main flush of early-season pink Cymbidiums start to bloom in May. There are pink Cymbidiums that bloom earlier, a few of which are noteworthy. In April the very beautiful Cymbidium Aunty Mary Kovich 'April Pink' sends up tall thin stems with up to a dozen smallish dark pinkish flowers with a most amazing fragrance. To 'guild-the-lily', so to speak, the floral display is set above a tuft of narrow leaves. I literally mean that the flowers are set above the leaves. Aunty Mary has Cymbidium insigne and C. sinense as its parents, having inherited the 1 m long or longer flower spikes with the flowers in the upper third from each parent. If Aunty Mary flowered in the cooler months instead of the unpredictable and sometimes hot early autumn weather here in Melbourne, it would last longer in flower. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I must say, it is hard to hold this apparent downfall against the plant. When you flower so early, have such an attractive flower and plant and a magnificent fragrance, how could you hold a grudge. If I lived in the mountains instead of the foothills I am sure the flowers would last much longer.

Aunty Mary Kovich 'April Pink'

The breeding of Cymbidium Peter Pan assisted greatly in ushering in a whole series of early-flowered Cymbidiums including the pinks. One might say 'especially the pinks'. Actually, C. Peter Pan was breed in 1957 but was not used sucessfully as a parent until Dr. Donald Wimber converted it to a tetraploid many years later. Progeny before this time were all triploid and unable to carry the breeding any further. The converted form was named C. Peter Pan 'Greensleeves'. Like C. Aunty Mary Kovich, C. Peter Pan has a great Asian summer-flowering species as a parent, namely C. ensifolium. Both C. sinense and C. ensifolium introduce heat tolerance and early flowering to hybrids as well as strong perfume. C. Peter Pan, although a hybrid between C. ensifolium and a standard, cold tolerant Cymbidium, retains autumn flowering with some flowering at other times of the year. The best qualities about C. Peter Pan from a breeders point of view are that: 1.) it is an easy grower 2.) heat/cold tolerant 3.) has upright flower spikes 4.) accepts other colours 5.) is fragrant and 6.) is highly fertile.

Cymbidium Peter Pan 'Greensleeves' 4N

Cymbidium Wendy, bred in 1987, was one of the attempts to introduce pink into the C. Peter Pan line. Get it, Peter Pan and Wendy? Who says orchid breeders don't have a sense of humour. Unfortunately, the other parent used to create Wendy was the pink diploid C. Wondah. Wendy, the progeny of this unfortunate crossing of Peter Pan and Wondah was a triploid and was effectively sterile or at least it failed to produce offspring. It is a great shame that his unfortunate fate would befall such a beautiful plant. Cymbidium Wendy 'Copabella' is an absolutely beautiful pink with a stunning lip. It is a freeflowering, easy to grow plant. In many repects it is like a pink version of C. Peter Pan with flowers that last for 2 months. Cymbidium Peter Pan flowers last barely a month.

Cymbidium Wendy 'Copabella' 3N

A much later pairing of Peter Pan, this time with the dusky pinkish-red C. Winter Fire did produce fertile offspring, the surprisingly popular C. Peter Fire. Now for me this pairing is not an obvious first choice. The colour of many C. Winter Fire is, well, less than clear or bright. The interesting thing about some forms of C. Winter Fire is that they have feathered petals and sepals. This feathering comes in several shades including: white, greyish-white, cream and greyish-pink. C. Peter Pan has an interesting colouring as well. Even though C. Peter Pan is generally green, if flowered in high light it gets slight reddish/brownish shading on the petals and sepals and reddish speckles at the base of the petals. You can imagine the tears from the breeder upon seeing the results of this cross between to 'interestingly' coloured Cymbidiums. Well, the colours did not come out quite as expected but they are 'interesting'. These are normally the words of the breeder putting an optimistic spin on a less than successful cross.

Some of the C. Peter Fire however did turn out passable to the breeder and wildly popular with the buying public. Turns out that womens' tastes in colours are radically different from we menfolk. Dusky pinks and mulberrys predominate with some individual clones with colour that fades as it extends out the petals and sepals. Colour also varies wildly when flowers are opened in high light or low light. A dusky mulberry in high light can fade to a light dusky pink with mulberry spots in low-light conditions. I have a set of C. Peter Fire 'Cutie' exhibiting just this syndrome this year. Last year I purchased a flowering plant of C. Peter Fire 'Fabulous' based on its bright pinkish flowers and red lip, as clearly illustrated on the Valley Orchids website and in their nursery. What a suprise when it flowered this year, obviously under different light conditions. I actually like it better under my light conditions! How's that for a strange turn of events? Breeding with 'interesting' colours can lead to a successful cross.

Cymbidium Peter Fire 'Fabulous'

One of the most successful of the early Cymbidiums and certainly one of the best breeders of high quality early pinks is C. Summer Pearl. This wonderful hybrid is another hybrid of C. Peter Pan, this time using the highly useful C. Trigo Royale. The later of these two hybrids is especially valued by the cut-flower industry because of its lasting qualities of the flowers, especially when cut. One of the issues when using some of the early season species and hybrids, especially those using C. ensifolium, C. erythrostylum, C. sinense and C. tracyanum, are that they do not draw water when cut and barely last a day after removal from the plant. Even though C. Trigo Royale has a high proportion of C. erythrostylum in its heritage the poor keeping qualities have been not only diluted but completely eliminated. There is now a long list of 'earlies' that contain C. Summer Pearl as a parent. One of my favourites at the moment is an un-named hybrid between Summer Pearl and Valley Glory.

Cymbidium Summer Pearl

Cymbidium Summer Pearl X Valley Glory

Before there was Cymbidium Peter Pan to assist in the breeding of early season pinks there was the absolutely beautiful species C. erythrostylum. While C. erythrostylum provided the early flowering characteristic it was C. insigne that provided the lovely pink colour. Cymbidium Albanense, the hybrid between C. erythrostylum and C. insigne provided the key link to a long line of pink hybrids, mainly in the early to mid season. While many of the first forms of C. Albanense were white with red spotted lips, several were a delicate pink. Recent remakes of C. Albanense are a good strong pink and provide exciting opportunities for further improvements of early flowering pinks, especially for miniatures and intermediate types. The characteristic triangular shape of C. erythrostylum and the smaller lip are passed on for several generations. The petals of C. erythrostylum close in over the column but when crossed with species or hybrids with more open form these broad petals open out in the progeny and give after a few generations what are classed as the 'rounded shape' that we have come to accept as the standard.

Cymbidium erythrostylum 'Dale'

One of the most recent hybrids to come out of Andy Easton's breeding stable is the very lovely C. Plum Village X C. Flying Colors. This is a very interesting little plant. Little is apt as the whole plant in full flower is only about 35 cm tall with about a dozen smallish, perky but well formed flowers. What is fascinating about this plant is the strong influence of C. erythrostylum. You can just look at it and see the original species in it. The parentage is actually very complex with C. erythrostylum, C. Alexanderi, C. floribundum (pumilum) and a range of other large-growing species and hybrids in its ancentry. The repeated use of pure white and pink petaled species and hybrids has lead to an unbelievably clear pink in the petals and sepals of this little cutie.

Cymbidium Plum Village X C. Flying Colors

Recently, I went to Adelaide to give a talk to the local Cymbidium Club. I was to give a talk on the influence of the old awarded plants, those species and hybrids awarded by the RHS between the 1880's to 1930. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about such an obscure topic was to highlight how these plants could still play a role in modern hybridizing. When looking through the collection of hybrid seedlings in the greenhouse at the moment, there were many of these 'Vintage' plants used as parents even though the crosses using them were made in the past couple of years.

While in Adelaide a wonderful man named Peter Hall and his Cymbidium club friend Wayne Baylis where my tour guides. I showed up at Peters house for a good day out looking at other peoples collections. He was a bit disparaging of his own collection and assumed that there would be nothing that I would be interested in. It could not have been further from the truth! Sitting there right outside of his back door was a plant I had been looking for for years, the serenely beautiful Cymbidium Osborn (C. erythrostylum X C. dayanum). By chance one of the people we were going to visit was the breeder of C. Osborn, the very individualistic Malcolm Osborn. This man has taken the brave and forward-thinking step and moved solely into the growing and breeding of miniature Cymbidiums. His collection was stunning and immaculately maintained. He was kind enough to provide me with a very healthy division of the plant of my desire.

Cymbidium Osborn 'Pink Mist'

One of the older hybrids that shows the C. erythrostylum influence and the beautiful pink colour is appropriately named 'Rosie'. Now 'Rosie' is not an officially recognised name but this stunning plant has been doing the rounds for many years. It comes out of the now defunct stable of Cecil Park Orchids. Although never named, the parentage of this hybrid is well known, namely, Earlyana X Henry Davis. The influence of C. erythrostylum is clearly evident in the broad, upward swept petals and triangular shape of the overall flower. This shape influence is not surprising as 'Rosie' is only three steps away from erythrostylum through the C. Earlyana parent. Cymbidium Earlyana is a hybrid between C. Early Bird and C. Louisiana. Cymbidium Early Bird is half C. erythrostylum. The other major influence in 'Rosie' is the wonderfully bizarre and highly fragrant C. tracyanum, itself a very early bloomer.

A couple of the nicest aspects of C. 'Rosie' are the vibrant colours and strong fragrance. The size of the flower and plant is well within the range of the normal standard types. the flower spike is over a metre tall and the flowers a good 10 cm across. Can you smell it by just looking at the picture? I can. The french have a name for that syndrome but for the life of me can't think of the word at the moment.

Cymbidium 'Rosie' (Earlyana X Henry Davis)

Sometimes an un-named plant comes into my posession that I know one of the parents but do not have a clue about the others that are listed. Going on trust you have to assume that the breeder knew what they were doing when they made the cross. Suspicion can be raised in the mind when one of the parents is itself un-named. One such plant recently came to live with me. The name on the label was (Sylvania X Palaker) X Musita. In this case the plant was not chosen because of the parentage but because when I walked into the sales shed of a local breeder and grower the plant jumped out at me. Not literally, but the colour was so clear and intense and the habit of the plant so attractive that I had to purchase it. The breeder was not originally going to sell it because he wanted it for himself. I love his wife for talking him out of keeping it. I have yet to work out its full heritage but it is clear from the little research that I have done that there is not a trace of C. Peter Pan in there anywhere. Interestingly, the parents were originally bred in 1970, 1976 and 1961 respectively. Here we go with the old hybrids playing a role in modern breeding! Needless to say, C. erythrostylum plays a large part in this hybrid through its grandparents parents C. Stanley Fouraker and C. Early Bird.

cymbidium (Sylvania X Palaker) X Musita

Cymbidium (Sylvania X Palaker) X Musita

Cymbidium (Cherry something. I can't read my own writing!)

My friend Julians plant is also a real stunner. A standard by classification but far from standard in looks. I wrote down the name incorrectly, which is something that happens when overly excited. This plant is pretty stunning in real life! Looks like this hybrid is probably a cross between the C. Peter Pan and C. erythrostylum lines of breeding. It is certainly a fragrant early season pink with broad upward swept petals! I am only guessing though. Will have to follow up on this one.

Seeing Red - Cymbidium Ruby Eyes and friends

2009-05-03T05:25:00.001-07:00

Cymbidium Ravishing Beauty 'Black Silk'

The breeding of true red in Cymbidiums has been a goal of many growers since the inception of hybridization in the genus. One of the first 'Red' Cymbidiums was C. Ceres 'F. C Hanbury'. There is considerable doubt over the true identity of good old 'F. C. Hanbury' but it remains one of the true studs of red breeding. Remakes of C. Ceres, as you can see from the pictures below, are not even close to red, more a pink overlay on yellow or a slightly reddish brown. It is hard to imagine the dark rich colours of today's complex hybrids coming from such lowly beginnings.

Cymbidium Ceres 2N

Cymbidium Ceres 'Florence Mausteller' 4N

A very productive line of breeding in reds was kicked off by the production of Cymbidium Ruby Eyes. In 1978, the year C. Ruby Eyes was registered, and the period shortly thereafter, Australia had a bit of a reputation for the production of red hybrids. I remember visiting several orchid nurseries in the early 1980's specifically to see what were rumoured to be some of the best red cymbidiums in the world. Wondabah Orchids was one of these nurseries. Needless to say C. Ruby Eyes came out of the stable of this once world reknown orchid nursery.

Cymbidium Ruby Eyes is the offspring of the most unlikely of parents. Imagine crossing a large showbench standard with intense colour with a miniature species. It is like crossing a Great Dane with a Chihuahua! Luckily, the pod parent was C. floribundum (pumilum) that great species that is not very descriminating with regard to who it will mate with. Unfortunately, if the 2N forms are used there can be problems with sterility in the resulting progeny. The other parent was C. Sensation, another good breeder. Another child of C. Sensation is the beautiful C. Flame Hawk. Below are two examples to give you some sort of idea of what the parents looked like. Neither of the plants pictured are the actual cultivars used to produce C. Ruby Eyes but are probably not far off.

Cymbidium floribundum 'Sina'

Cymbidium Sensation 'Purple Perfection'

The marriage between C. floribundum and Sensation created quite a stir. Here was a match made in heaven. One of the qualities of C. Sensation that contributed to the success of C. Ruby Eyes is that although the flowers are large and quite normal for a standard the plants are relatively small. Another interesing feature of C. Sensation is that the pseudobulbs are remarkably round, halfway between the size of a handball and a tennis ball. The leaves are relatively narrow for a standard.

There are numerous cultivars of C. Ruby Eyes doing the rounds in the orchid world. The most famous of these is C. Ruby Eyes 'Red Baron'. I will get back to this cultivar in a minute. It is worthwhile to note that there are actually better quality cultivars such as: 'Royal Show', 'Tokushima', 'Paradisea' the list goes on. There are also imposters going under the name of 'Red Baron' . Some growers have taken on the task of coming up with an improved C. Ruby Eyes by remaking the original cross but using different parents. The results have been variable but have not really been an improvement on the original. Several of the original cross are still floating around but have never been named. One of these is a plant that I have grown for years. It did not meet the standard of being a red but it is a pretty plant none-the-less. It will never get bred with because it has a flaw that can be passed on. See if you can work out what the flaw is from the picture below. No it is not a virus that is the problem. I reckon this cultivar actually has a very beautiful labellum, much more clearly and delicately marked than any cultivar I have seen.

Cymbidium Ruby Eyes

Cymbidium Ruby Eyes 'Royal Show'

The problem is a that some cultivars suffer from partial petal peloria. This shows up as color breaks in the petals, or in the case of my pretty little plant, callus ridges occurring on the petals. Although in fully peloric flowers these callus ridges would be yellow or white, like those on the normal labellum, those on my plant are a deep black/red. You can also see a partial colour break on the left petal of the centre flower.

This partial peloria can be passed on to progeny. Several hybrids of C. Ruby Eyes, can exhibit this genetic fault. Some that I have seen this mutation occur in are Radiant Ruby, Ruby Doll, Ten Pin and Inky Dink. In one group of seedlings that I have flowered out of the hybrid C. Ruby Eyes X Fascella there were a few that strongly exhibited odd petals. Have a look at the centre flower and the one immediately above it in one of my plants. You can see the deformity along the upper edges of the petals.

Cymbidium Ruby Eyes X Fascella

Cymbidium Ten Pin can also exhibit partial peloria but only in some individual plants. Two examples are giving below. The first plant is normal and shows no signs of genetic faults. The second has the remnants of calli on the petals as evidenced by the dark red base to the petals tapering through the whole of the petal.

Cymbidium Ten Pin (normal)

Cymbidium Ten Pin (slight petal mutation)

While many people see Peloria as an interesting phenomenon, I find it a deformity. There are some collectors out there that have collections of both Petal and Sepal Pelorics. To me it is the equivalent of Hip Displasia in German Shepherds. The kennel clubs try to eliminate from the breeding program dogs that exhibit the trait. Maybe we should do the same if we want to breed stable, high quality plants. To this end, I make the outlandish suggestion that we should eliminate C. Ruby Eyes 'Red Baron' from future breeding. I qualify this by adding that those 'Red Baron' with the petal deformity. There is strong evidence that not all the 'Red Baron' out there are the genuine cultivar. If you need an example of this go to your friendly web-based image browser and see the variation in what is called C. Ruby Eyes 'Red Baron'. Be particularly careful when purchasing meristem produced plants. Mass multiplication of orchids through meristem culture is known to cause genetic deformities, many of which are undesirable. Cymbidium Ruby Eyes 'Red Baron' is one of those plants that is mass produced by meristem propagation.

Plants bred either directly or indirectly from C. Ruby Eyes now number in the hundreds. C. Ruby Eyes alone has been used as a pod parent at least 15 times and as a pollen parent at least 80 times. This plant is still being used in breeding programs and will probably continue to contribute for years to come. Its primary use is in the breeding of red pendulous, minitures and intermediate Cymbidiums. This large number of offspring and it's continued use in breeding programs is remarkable considering it is 31 years old. That is amazing staying power for any hybrid. Hopefully if we continue to use this outstanding plant we will select and use cultivars that do not exhibit genetic mutations. If we use 'clean' plants of C. Ruby Eyes and its offspring we will certainly be in-the-black financially but in-the-red in regard to high quality, high colour cymbidiums.

Just as a post script, Here is a picture of one of the offspring of C. Sensation, the very beautiful C. Flame Hawk.

Cymbidium Flame Hawk 'Lipper'

(flower just opening)

Blood Flowers - Haemanthus

2009-04-19T04:37:00.000-07:00

September of 1981 was a turning point in my life. It was the start of a year-long field study of orchids in the wild. My supervisor Phil Cribb and I had worked out an itinerary and meticulously planned out places to visit, people to see, where my monies would be deposited and what tasks would be carried out. Part of my task was to collect plants, both living and pressed, that would eventually make their way back to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. There was a bit of argy bargy working out where to go. Phil wanted me to carry out an extension of his work on various groups of orchids in Australia and the Pacific Islands. My dreams and ambitions had always focused on Africa and Asia. Jane Goodall was a hero of mine and in my young mind visualized myself exploring the African bush finding and working with strange and unusual plants. There was also the desire to follow in the steps of the great collectors of the 19th century and discover wonders in the mountains of Thailand, Vietnam, and India. What is the saying? Be careful what you wish for it may come true. They did come true.

After boarding the plane at Heathrow Airport it was a relatively short trip to Durban in South Africa. The destination of Durban does not seem like a logical first choice to see orchids in the wild but the Orchid Congress being held there was a good incentive! An orchid congress is a great place to meet all sorts of orchid freaks, see an amazing array of plants and listen to a very large number of orchid talks. It was little piggy in orchid heaven. All day and night the conversations focused on orchids.

Being such a young thing in a world of much older people posed certain problems. Most of the participants were three times my age. Pierre and Thelma Joubert came to the rescue. They were the organisers of the congress and were not only well organised but extremely generous and friendly. Pierre kept me more than busy the whole time I was there. Thelma introduced me to people and their plant collections. Their fellow committee members Lance and Carmen also provided numerous opportunities to participate. Carmen asked if I would like to be steward on the Oncidium Alliance judging panel. The yes flew out of my mouth before she even finished her sentence!

One night while we were having drinks and nibblies Pierre asked me to come along on their post-congress trip. One of the members had to cancel and there was a spare ticket. This involved a break in my itinerary but Phil agreed to it. A trip to the private game park Motswari sounded a great idea. Not only could I see orchids but all the African Wildlife as well. Frank and Ruth Shride from the USA would be accompanying us to work on an article. They were writing an article for National Geographic on the white lions of Motswari. You can imagine how inadequate I felt in the company of such luminaries. Thankfully, I don't suffer from shyness and the others did not suffer from egomania. The stories from that trip will have to wait for another post but suffice to say we saw heaps of plants.

When we got back to Durban I spent a few more days traveling around the local area with Pierre and Thelma's son Richard. He was only slightly older than me and just as friendly as his parents. We travelled north and south, about as far as you can go in one day and still be back for dinner. The plants we saw were fantastic. Streptocarpus, Protea, Strelitzia, Erica, Aloe, heaps of bulbous plants and of course orchids. I didn't know there were so many Eulophia species!

The next leg of my journey took me to Johannesburg. The change in altitude played havoc with me. Five-thousand feet does not seem like a very high elevation but for someone who never really spent much time above an elevation of 500 feet, it was a great change. The head spun, the stomach churned and all I wanted to do was sleep. Thankfully, that only lasted a couple of days. My host, Daniel Kleynhans, was not only gracious but understanding. Daniel delivered me to the Botanic Gardens where I was to meet up with Doug McMurtry. Doug had organised a trip that would see himself, myself and an artist named Barbara Jeppe tripping up to the Drakensburg Mountains in search of various plants.

Barbara was an absolute hoot to travel with. We would be belting along at 80 Km an hour down some dirt track in the middle of nowhere and Barbara would scream out 'Stop!'. Doug would slam on the anchors, stop and then reverse until Barbara commanded him to 'Stop'!. The doors of the car would fly open and Doug and I would rush like mad people following a madly smoking crazy woman across a dusty treeless plain looking for God-knows-what. Thankfully, the very first time she did this we came across a ripper of a plant, Boophone disticha. Boophone has a large , perfectly-rounded heads of hundreds of scarlet flowers on a naked stem that shoots straight out of the earth. At flowering time the leaves are totally dead and in most cases missing. This was just the first of many beautiful bulbs, orchids and other fabulous plants that we would come across. We got a thrill every time Barbara screamed.

As I said at the start of this post my trip to South Africa was a turning point in my life. It also made a huge impact on my life choices. Since that auspicious trip, my interest in South African plants has become and remained strong. That very first sighting of Boophone lead to my life-long interest in South African Amaryllidaceae and Amaryllidaceae as a whole. Seeing Pelargonium and Aloe in the wild, subsequently lead to nice collections of these appearing in my garden. Interestingly, there is a pot containing Boophone disticha sitting on the corner of my verandah just outside the kitchen window.

Every Autumn there is a strong reminder in my garden of my trip to South Africa. The first of the South African Amaryllidaceae to flower are the Haemanthus species, followed by Amaryllis and finally by a three month long eye-popping flowering of the various Nerine. Below are just a couple of species of Haemanthus that grace my garden. These two species flower regularly and easily. Several other species in the genus and in my garden require fire to burn over the top of their bulbs to stimulate flowering.

Haemanthus coccineus Form 1

Haemanthus coccineus Form 2

Haemanthus albiflos Broad-leaved, early-flowering form.

Guess the Hybrid - for my forum friends

2009-03-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

One of the internet forums that I dip into once in awhile, alright, in truth every day, has a periodic topic called 'Guess the Hybrid'. Usually, the plant is an un-named hybrid, sometimes a named hybrid of unusual form. These little guessing games are interesting as they challenge people to think. They also help us to refine our knowledge, especially of heritable characters.

A couple of side issues that have come up in the past couple of months have been the quality of Cymbidiums in Australia and the quality of the pictures of them. There are few orchid magazines in Australia compared to America. Inevitably, space is limited in these magazines and only a few pictures can appear. By a few I mean less than 50 in the two big orchid journals and less than 25 or even 10 in the smaller ones.

Many of the people in the various orchid societies are keen growers of orchids. The demographic is generally retired people. Their abilities with a camera? Well, it is understandable that some people would be critical of their photographs. For the most part the photos are mug shots or pictures of the whole plant. The mug shots look like the mug shots of famous people taken after a big night on the town. The flowers look a little past their best. Even the photographer was obviously having a bad night, lacking the ability to focus properly. Many of the pictures are compositionally challenged, a little off centre or with the flower position at funny angles. Almost inevitably a flash is used that does horrible things to the colours and makes the 'portraits' look harsh and washed out.

Many orchid societies around the world employ professional photographers to take pictures of the awarded plants. Smaller clubs and less well-off clubs have to get Ethel, Harry, Violet or Richard or any other person hanging around with a camera to quickly snap the picture. In the age of the digital camera, everyone things they are a photographer. Few if any of them are in any way professional, and even fewer have actually taken a class in photography. Some of these would be photographers have not even read the manual and don't know what half the buttons on the camera are for.

Complicating matters is that the people who do own special or very high quality Cymbidiums would not even think of exhibiting them in public. Several good reasons are given by various people for not displaying their best plants in public. First and foremost is that when plants are exhibited at a show, ever man and his brother wants to touch the plants, photograph them or worse yet steal them. Many do the former two, occasionally some do the later. Part of this 'touching' involves the removal of pollen to be used in breeding programs. The best plants are the best breeders, for the most part, and no breeder in their right mind would want to give away their precious pollen to be used in someones breeding program. I remember exhibiting a plant of Arachnorchis (Caladenia) rosella in the mid-1980's. Within seconds of putting the plant on display, all of the pollen was taken. Secondly, you never know who's plant may be virused. This non-lethal but severely disfiguring disease is not something any high quality grower would want in their collection.

One of the commentators on the forum remarked 'Why are Australian Cymbidiums so Ugly?'. I must admit, that at the time my mood was not the best and my reaction was uncharacteristically grumpy. Going back and reading the post now, it was remarkably terse, lackied humour and used the word 'unfair' more times than was absolutely neccesary. I still feel that the commentators comments were unjustified but looking at the magazine he was referring to he/she would get the impression that Cymbidiums in Australia were 'Ugly'.

Truth be told, there are good-looking Cymbidiums in Australia. Tastes may vary from those in the USA or even Europe, England or Japan but they are pretty none-the-less. Indeed, Australia has at times 'Punched above it's weight' in Cymbidium breeding. It seems as though we are going through a light patch at the moment. I used the term 'It seems' advisedly. There are many interesting and novel hybrids originating in Australia that are not shared with the public, especially with those in the USA, Holland, Japan and even Australia. The history of people taking the best of Australia's breeding and propogating thousands of plants through meristemming is reknown. These proliferators, as they are known in the trade, are a scourge, making handsome profits by picking the eyes out of legitimate breeding programs.

For the benefit of our forum members, I offer up the plant below. Hopefully, the picture is of sufficient quality to judge the quality of the flower. Unlike some of the 'guessing games' posted on the forum, there is no prize with this game. The 'winner' walks away with a warm inner glow of being the first to guess the plant by using their oversized brains filled with hundreds if not thousands of mental picture of plants they have seen.

I would encourage you to post a comment about this plant. It is easy to do. Just below the picture is an option to post a comment. You can be totally anonymous if you would like. BTW, if you click on the picture it will bring it up to a larger size.

Cymbidium William Weaver

You will see that a name has now appeared on the photo of the mystery plant. This is a lovely plant bred by Andy Easton. The person who guessed the name correctly was Ha Bui my generous and kind pen friend who I will meet face-to-face one day! The incorrect guesses were very interesting and even had me doubting the labels on my plant! Thankfully, All was well, with Andy confirming and even congratulating the winner before I had a chance to.

Cymbidium Koh-hou

2009-03-17T02:10:00.000-07:00

One of my modest goals in life is to collect together all of the species and primary hybrids of the genus Cymbidium. Before you go all crazy on me, there are only about 50 species of Cymbidium. That means if I grow one plant of each and all of the possible combinations of the species I would still only have a collection of 2,500 plants! Easy really. Well, not so easy actually.

The first thing is to get hold of all the species. There are a handfull of species that are readily available locally, mainly the big showy plants like Cymbidium tracyanum, C. hookerianum, C. insigne, C. floribundum, and C. lowianum. Without too much trouble you can even get hold of C. iridioides, C. erythraeum, C. elegans, C. eburneum, C. mastersii C. lancifolium, dayanum and C. cochleare. Cymbidium sanderae is relatively easily obtained though some do not consider it a true species. The same is the case for C. suavissimum. Several years ago a few plants of the very rare C. whitea came onto the market and sold for nearly $200. Now, seedlings of this species are appearing everywhere for $8. Damn, I should have waited.

The more tropical species are also fairly easy to obtain. Cymbidium findleysonianum, bicolor, aloifolium and atropurpureum are widely available in Melbourne but there seems to be little interest in them as they need a greenhouse in winter, most are larger plants and they have relatively small flowers when compared to the other species. They tend to not flower all that well in the southern latitudes and the leaves tend to spot with fungus in the cool damp period in winter.

The dwarf, broad-leaved species C. devonianum is readily available but flowering sized plants fetch prices that would make your toes curl. The even smaller growing C. tigrinum is an even more expensive little bugger. This weekend at an orchid show there were 100mm (4 inch) pots going for $45.00. It is particularly rare in cultivation here in Melbourne.

The three native species, C. canaliculatum, C. madidum and C. suave are 'common as muck'. The only problem is that many of them are wild-collected plants. I recently bought a 12 growth plant of C. suave salvaged from a logging operation. It set me back all of $20. Most of these wild-collected plants are not really value for money. They do not take well to being ripped off a tree and being stuck in a pot. Most die fairly rapidly. Those that live are of dubious quality. They are average for the species but that is not what horticulture is all about. Horticulture abhores average. Horticulturalists select plants with the best qualities, be it growth habit, flower size or flower colour. The best forms are crossed and the resultant seedlings grown on. It is these seedlings that go on to do bigger and better things. Oh, they also command the highest price. A three bulb plant of a tetraploid form of the dark burgundy form of C. canaliculatum was being sold for $100 several years ago. The money couldn't get out of my pocket fast enough. It was worth every penny.

Most of the other species are either not available or not available commercially. Cymbidiun ensifolium, goeringii, and sinense occasionally sneak out for a visit on the sale benches. They must be very special plants as the prices paid for them are enormous. We have yet to see several of the species appear in our collections. We only dream about C. wenshanense, C. roseum, C. elongatum and C. aliciae.

The primary hybrids are not everyone's cup of tea. In many cases they are not an improvement of the parents. Actually, there are a few that are decidedly inferior to the parents. You wonder what the breeder was doing when they dreamt up some of these crosses. They almost certainly looked better in the breeders visions than in reality. The interesting thing is that for some people, myself included, it is not so much about producing beautiful plants. The goal in the making of primary hybrids is seeing which traits are dominant and which are recessive. A secondary goal is to see if the cross actually works. The more closely related species cross easily and produce fertile offspring. More distantly related species may not cross at all or produce sterile offspring. This last scenario does not always mean that the cross is a dead end. Don Wimber proved this by converting the sterile C. Peter Pan from 2N to 4N. Admittedly, C. Peter Pan is not a primary hybrid but it does have a species, C. ensifolium, as one parent. After the conversion from 2N to 4N, C. Peter Pan became fertile again and has been used in a long series of stunningly beautiful and fragrant hybrids.

Cymbidium Peter Pan 'Greensleeves' 4N

Two of the most delicate and in many respects interesting Cymbidium species are C. ensifolium and C. dayanum. Cymbium ensifolium is a very widespread species in the wild and has a large number of named forms ranging from pure white albinos through greens, tans, browns and reds. The base colours are some form of white, green or tan with various degrees of spotting of the darker colours. Cymbidium dayanum is a stunning crystaline white with bright red lines on the sepals and petals and a red lip with a bright yellow patch in the middle, at least in the typical form. Thre are fine forms that are pure white albinos and others that are red with burgundy striping.

A recent remake of the hybrid C Koh-hou used an albino form of C. ensifolium and the standard form of C. dayanum. The result combines the best and worst features of both plants. On the good side it is a very easy plant to grow and flowers prolifically. My larger plant is blooming for the second time this year and I fully expect it to flower at least one more time. The leaves are narrow and an extremely shiny dark green. The flowers are very near to C. dayanum in colour but 1/3 again larger. The flower spikes are upright to slightly arching like the C. ensifolium parent. The fragrance of the flowers is absolutely intoxicating. One small five inch pot with a seven-flowered spike perfumed the whole livingroom, dining room and kitchen. On the downside, the flowers are as short-lived as each of the parents, barely 3 weeks. If C. Koh-hou was a Crocus, Iris or a Rhododendron, 3 weeks would be a really long display. We have high expectations of Cymbidiums.

Sometimes a plant has beautiful flowers and an ugly plant. Likewise there are many Cymbidiums with lovely foliage and shockingly ugly flowers. Little C. Koh-hou is an absolutely ideal display plant; stunning to look at and a pleasure to the nose. It is one of the easiest of plants to grow. A specimen plant can be grown in a 6 inch pot. What it lacks in keeping qualities it more than makes up for in grace and elegance.

Cymbidium Koh-hou

Pictures from Hades - Part 2

2009-02-28T02:42:00.000-08:00

I would suggest you grab a cup of tea and get comfortable before starting to read this post. It is a bit long. It is my way of documenting some of the events that have taken place in the past three weeks here in my bush home on the Northeast outskirts of Melbourne Australia. You may also want to grab a box of tissues. This is not a happy post. It has taken me two days to piece together. Not that the writing was difficult or the pictures hard to prepare. Writing this post made my experience 'real', with all the emotion that was involved. Many parts were left out on purpose. As with all my posts you can view a larger version of the pictures by clicking on them.

On the 7th of February I posted four pictures of what was going on around me. The day was abnormally hot, the winds extremely high and the humidity extremely low. You could feel from the first thing in the morning that this was going to be a special day. The meteorologists, the Country Fire Authority and our local public broadcasting service had been warning us all week. The week before, when we experienced three days of similar conditions, should have given us fair warning. The 7th was especially brutal weather wise; 46.6C with 100 kph winds and less than 10% humidity. These conditions were an all time record breaker for us.

You could feel it. You could not escape it. It zapped the energy. It numbed the mind. There was nothing you could do. The electricity supply was periodically interrupted. The phone lines could get incoming calls but we could not make outgoing calls. The local emergency phone tree was activated. The first call came at 10:00 am. There was a fire in Kilmore east, 30 km away. Implement fire plan! We knew it would happen. You could just tell. The sense of anticipation was rippling though us. Our conversations centred on fire and every broadcaster and news service we heard was talking about it Even the local christian radio station was in on it. My little portable pocket radio only gets FM and only a few stations one of which is LightFM - Christian radio. If we needed God on any day, this was it.

Our fire plan is really quite simple. Pack, load car, leave. Oh, yeah, turn on 774 AM our local public broadcaster and emergency services station. It was too oppressively hot to move much. It was too much to think about driving the 20km to the Mall to hang out and watch a movie. The local hoods would probably have helped themselves to our belongings packed so neatly in the car, those special things that you take to start a new life if needs be. A weeks worth of clothes and toiletries, camera equipment, laptops, backup hard drives, important papers, special photographs, my diplomas, my grandfathers fob watch, my grandmothers reading glasses and enamel jewelry box, the set of handcoloured prints of Nicholls 'Orchids of Australia' and a heap of stuff. Way too much crammed in. It is not good to have too much warning. The mall was out of the question. We were 'safe' it was a long way away.

We needed to keep ourselves busy while we waited out the day. I took pictures and put together a blog on my plants that got cooked the week before. My partner sat on the couch watching old movies. We both drank copious quantities of iced tea. We packed of course and put everything by the back door. Every half hour or so we would get a phone call. After each phone call I would run outside and snap a few photos. The radio announcers kept saying that the fire was at Kilmore East. The Country Fire Authority website said Kilmore East. The number of trucks attending the fire kept getting bigger and bigger. By 5:00 there were 86 appliances in attendance. Serious stuff but still in Kilmore east. We could see really high smoke drifting over but couldn't smell it. You could still see the sun through it.

At 5:20 things changed. I popped out to see what was going on. Still no smell of smoke. I walked out to the walk and looked up. My heart sank and I screamed out to my napping partner. 'You have to come quick, look at this'. Below is what I saw. You can see the corner of the house in the lower left of the photo.

The fire was no longer in Kilmore East! The radio still told me it was. I tried not to panic. It didn't work. The cars were loaded. I got into some serious photography. By the time I walked to the the picnic table it was obvious that the fire was no longer in Kilmore East. There was smoke rising in Strathewen, Kinglake West, Pheasant Creek, Kinglake, Saint Andrews, Steels Creek, Christmas Hills and Yarra Glen. The wind was still coming from the Northwest. The cool change was meant to come at 6:00 bringing with it winds from the Southwest. We only had to last 1/2 hour and we would be safe. The change would take the smoke and fires away from us. Below is a sequence taken over the half hour between 5:30 and 6:00. The first two photos are just before the change, the third at the change and the last one after the change. Thankfully, the change came early, about 5:45 for us. Well, it was good for us, except for the dust. The problem was that the winds that came from the Southwest were even stronger than the winds from the Northwest. At 130 kph the Southwest winds fanned the fires and drove them in a totally different direction, creating a huge smear of fire across the mountains. Fire burning on a 70 - 80 km front.

5:30

5:40

5:50

6:00

Shortly after the last photograph was taken it started to get dark. Not because it was time to get dark but because the sun was being blocked by the smoke. Our neighbours Bert and Sue from down in the valley came up to our place to get a view of the fires. We chatted and tried to keep each other calm by making small talk. I took some photos but because of my trembling hands they all came out blurry. The tripod and switching the camera to timer mode helped greatly. I pointed the camera in the direction of the previous shots. Just as I did the first flames started coming over the hill. At first it was just a quick flash above the hill and then it disappeared. The shutter kept clicking. We started to hear the drone of a jet. It didn't change. You normally hear a jet coming, it passes over and then goes away. This sound kept getting louder and louder. It was the fire. It was sucking up oxygen and consuming organic matter, spewing smoke and heat heavenwards, creating it's own weather. By just after 7:00 we started hearing explosions followed by huge eruptions of flames. We worked out that it was gas bottles exploding. Then we saw a house go up in flames. Then another, and another and another. It was coming closer and closer to our home. Just after 7:00 the picture below was the view from our picnic table. The picture from the same position in the previous blog Pictures from Hades was taken just before this one. If you click on the photo below it will enlarge and you will see that it is taken at approximately the same angle as the four previous shots. You can see my neighbour Eric's house in the foreground and Mount Everard fully ablaze in the background.

7:10

This was extremely serious and it was time for us to leave. Actually, we should have left hours ago. I had enough time to snap a few more shots, download them, resize them and post them. It took me all of ten minutes to do that procedure. In the meantime my partner called and booked a hotel. We had quick showers and jumped in the cars and left. When we were in the car, I called the head of the phone tree and told them we were leaving. He said most had gone already. Great, we were the only bunnies left in the neighbourhood. This fact later turned out to be incorrect but at least we knew we were out of there. Some of my most dramatic pictures were taken in our last ten minutes at the house. The house we were not sure would be there in the morning.

We spent the night of the 7th February in the city, in a large hotel with air-conditioning and cable television. We didn't sleep. When we arrived at the hotel we noticed that our cars were caked in dust and ash. They stood out like hillbilly cars at a country club. Two filthy cars in a carpark full of gleaming new upmarket cars. The staff at the hotel were marvelous. They knew our situation so put us up in a very quiet room on the top floor facing away from the fires. We got a complimentary breakfast and they even made up a lunch for us to take home. It was pretty obvious we were a bit distressed and disoriented.

The next afternoon we went home. The house was there, the property was unburnt. There were 23 messages on our home phone. On the way home we heard that 14 people had died in the fires. Thank goodness more hadn't lost their lives. The second message on our phone was to inform us that two friends and their daughter had died. Several other messages had similar grim news. The toll was going to be higher than 14. The phone messages told us that.

By Tuesday the extent of the events of Saturday the 7th were becoming apparent. 181 dead, 1820 houses destroyed 7,000 people homeless. Shelters in Whittlesea, Yea and Diamond Creek serviced the vast majority of the affected people. Most had gotten out with only the clothes on their back. The stories told on the radio and portrayed on the television are too harrowing to put up here. What was in evidence by tuesday was the best and worst of the human character. Arsonists were caught and would have been lynched had the police not spirited them away to unkown locations. Several were caught stealing relief money collection containers. One person even put in and recieved monies for the funeral of their father that was killed in the fires. Only problem was that the scam artist had no father in the fire area. Thankfully, they were caught trying to claim benifits for being a victim. This low in human behaviour was more than amply compensated for by the thousands of people who donated goods and money to the relief effort. and jumped in to lend a hand. One hundred million dollars were donated in the first week and the Red Cross asked that people stop donating certain types of goods, particularly food.

On Monday the 9th February wilst getting ready for work, the phone tree was activated again. We were on an alert warning with fires in the three communities to the North and East of us. Cars were repacked and we headed off to work. Not not sure what I did that day. judging from the dates I submitted a few subject amendment forms and had lunch but don't remember much else. Tuesday was similar to Monday. A few abusive messages were posted in a forum that I am on. My numbness was turning to anger. I made a vow to myself and a couple of friends that there would be nor further postings until my nerves settled and the anger was gone or at least at manageable levels. This was no time for trivial online discussions of flower count on hybrid plants or some strange theory about how the fires were retribution for the changing of abortion laws in Victoria.

One of the most annoying things that started coming out on Monday and that gained strength on tuesday was the blame game. Lack of controlled burning was blamed. Rampant green legislation by some of the councils where the fires occurred were blamed. Outrageous, uninformed and insensitive remarks were the order of the day. Even Germaine Greer made pompous and simplistic remarks from the comfort of her upmarket digs in London. Thankfully, by Wednesday the finger pointers were identified for the idiots that they are and were subsequently ignored or ridiculed in further reporting. More balanced and informed commentary started to filter through and gain strength. A Bushfire Royal Commission was called.

Wednesday came and went. Do you ever have one of those days when you remember getting to the end of the work day and wondering how it went so quickly.? It seemed as though I had just gotten in. Had a few, not very pleasant, phone calls with friends informing me of lost friends or me informing them of lost friends.

Thursday was slightly better. The newspapers were not reporting any more deaths. The toll stood at 181 and hadn't changed in a couple of days. The more sensationalist tabloids were predicting 300 dead. The fires were still burning but not with the ferocity of the previous weekend. The fires were sneaking closer to the house again. Butterman's Track and the Watsons Creek reserve were burning. The Kinglake National Park in Arthurs Creek was being backburnt to prevent the fire getting to our town. It was disconcerting to have plumes of smoke rising to the East and North of us. Not much sleep that night. Below is a picture of the moonrise on the thursday night. Eerie and beautiful at the same time. The smoke permeated everything as did the ash and dust.

Smokey Moon and Butterman's Track burning

Smoke transforming the moon

Thursday was the first day that the air was clear enough to see the mountains again. This was the opportunity to get a couple of 'After' pics. The camera was put on the tripod and aligned to the originals. Peace and stillness was starting to return to our neighbourhood.

The 7th of February

The 12th of February

The 7th of February

The 12th of February

The following Wednesday provided me with an opportunity to go into the fire affected area. This should have been an easy task. At the end of our road is a small turnoff that has beautiful views over the mountains and valleys of our district. I took the camera up there to get some pictures. The plan was to drive down the hill to Strathewen to check on friends. When I stopped at the turnoff and got out of the car a wave of nerves came over me. The tripod was not in the car and my hands were not still enough to take photographs. The drive down the hill would not be possible today. Attempts on Thursday and on Friday also failed. Still no success. For crying out loud, it was only at the bottom of the hill! Emotions were still too raw and close to the surface. After my experience on Friday night a phone call was made to my friend Lynlee to organise a trip that would involve several people. She had to drop off some materials to some friends. We had our wristbands that allowed us into the area. Because there were so many deaths in the area and not all the bodies had been cleared, only residents were allowed into the area. Roadblocks manned by police made sure the only those who were meant to be there were there.

We loaded up the car with fox traps, extra supplies and some 'treats' for the people we would be visiting. Down the hill we went. Lynlee and I made an agreement not to take pictures of houses or cars, only pictures of the bush. This was a respect thing. Blue and white flagging tape meant people had died. Long flowing ribbons meant that the bodies were still there, short tied up ribbons meant the bodies had been removed. Enough said about that. Below are a few photographs taken along the way.

Entering Strathewen

Just before the main settlement of Strathewen

Bill and Linda's Property at Strathewen

Bill and Linda's house survived but the rest of the
property and Bill's moterbike didn't

At the top of Bill and Linda's property.
Former damp forest reduced to sticks and ash.

Heading up Beale Road between Strathewen and Kinglake.
The silence was amazing.
How could this ever regenerate?

The track leading to my study sites at Mt Everard

Ashbed at one of my study sites on Mt. Everard

A Wallaby that didn't make it out of my study site.

Lynlee checking to see if a rare conifer had survived the fire.
Some opportunist had come and cut down every
plant of the Cypress Pine, presumably because the
wood is so valuable. Chances of it regenerating?

Heading down the main road from Kinglake to St. Andrews.

Overlooking the Ninks Road Valley at St. Andrews.

The fires continue three weeks after the main front has passed. 300,00 hectares have been burnt out. Over 2,000 houses have been destroyed. 210 people lost their lives. Dozens are in hospital. 37 are still missing and presumed dead. But there are already signs of renewal. Lyrebirds, Wallabies and Wombats are scratching around the ash looking for food. What could possibly sustain these creatures in such desparate times? A wander through the forest looking at their scratchings showed what they were eating. The smell of their food permeated the air and gave away its presence before it could be seen. Fungi are growing everywhere. Stimulated by the fire, fungi are putting out fruiting bodies. The first fungi observed was a truffle type. It smells strongly of garlic. Wallaby and Lyrebird scratchings showed me where they were. Typical mushrooms were pushing through the still warm ash. Below is a picture of one of them.

A fungus, identity unkown.

On the Thurday after the fires there was an article in the paper about a young girls' excitement about the 'naked ladies' flowering around her burnt out house in Strathewen. I had to get a photo for myself. It was a sign of hope. Five days after a fire and a plant was blooming? Amaryllis belladonna (Naked Ladies or Belladonna Lily) is stimulated to bloom by fires in it's native South Africa. It retains this habit in it's new home in Australia and in particular in Strathewen.

Amaryllis belladonna two weeks after the fires.
Fire truck rushing to attend a nearby outbreak of fire.

Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea australis) resprouting two weeks after fire.
Thousands of grasstrees were resprouting, including the
related species X. minor (Small Grass Tree).

Pictures from Hades

2009-02-07T03:10:00.001-08:00

Today as I mentioned earlier was a day from Hades. Temps to 46.4 in Melbourne and up to 47.8 just outside of Melbourne. Soon after the fires started to take hold. These are pictures taken from my house of the fires around my town. They speak for themselves.

Looking toward St Andrews

Looking toward Dixon's Creek

Another view just north of Dixon's Creek

Mount Disappointment at Pheasant Creek

A blog from Hades

2009-02-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in my basement typing away on my laptop surrounded by my orchids. They got moved inside last night. Thankfully a fan is blasting over me and the plants. I can here you saying that 'Chuckie, you have gone absolutely crazy'. Well in the words of our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd 'extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures'.

You see, at the moment the temperatures outside are just over 43C (110F). Last week we had similar and higher temperatures for three days in a row. Needless to say all sorts of organisms suffered. Animals, including humans, were dying, plants were dying, and dust storms were blanketing everything. Today is even worse as they predict it will get to 44C or higher (112F). with winds of 50-90 Kilometres per hour. Our community fire guard phone tree was activated earlier today and we just got notification that there are two fires 10k northwest of us. The winds are blowing out of the northwest!!!

The orchids had a particularly hard time. Not all of them though. Many of the Cymbidiums lived through with little more than losing the odd leaf or two. Some others did not fare as well. Below are some pictures of the worst of the casualties. My friends on the Cymbidium Forum wanted to see the 'devastation' . Well to feed their morbid curiosity, the camera was pulled out and a different kind of picture taken! I hope you enjoy these George! Stop gloating that you have such nice weather in your part of the world.

The first picture is of a beautiful little cloud-forest plant called Maxillaria sophronites. It is normally a pretty tough little plant. Interestingly, it didn't scorch in the heat but basically 'cooked' . All of the plant tissues first blanched, like brocolli in a steamer, and then turned these lovely shades of brown. It is heading toward the compost bin. The second photo is the usually magnificant Maxillaria fletcherianum. The plant did have half a dozen fully-leaved pseudobulbs and flower spikes starting to form. It now only has two severely burnt leaves on the very youngest growth. Very sad.

Maxillaria sophronites

Maxillaria fletcherianum

The worst affected plants were the Masdevallias. These mostly cloud forest plants without much in the way of water reserves, literally curled up their toes. All but two plants in my Masdevallia collection are dead. Maxillaria triangularis, pictured below, gives you some indication of what the rest of my Masdevallias look like. They are now the most expensive compost you can think of.

Masdevallia triangularis

While the majority of the cymbidiums fared pretty well, some did not. Below is a picture of what was a mature plant of Cym. iansonii. Not only did the leaves cook, but the pseudobulbs also steamed to the point of blanching. While some plants had burnt tips, this species cooked from the inside out! The leaves stayed green longer than the pseudobulbs. The leaves on these cooked pseudobulbs shed a few days later and the new growth that at first appeared green rotted from the base upward! The ends of the leaves are green but the bases are completely black.

Cymbidium iansonii

A couple of the Cymbidium devonianum hybrids responded in a very peculiar way. Instead of pseudobulbs cooking or leaves getting burnt tips individual cells withing the leaf bleached. Not all of the cells but a scattering of cells. And not on the young growth, only on the older leaves. Very strange. Below is a picture of Cymbidium Devon Odyssey exhibiting the mottled cell bleaching induced by heat.

Cymbidium Devon Odyssey

The wierdiest of the heat damage is this living but bleached tissue. Not hot enough to kill the cell but enough to blast the chloroplasts.

Cymbidium Mad Magic

Cymbidium Flying Comet

2009-01-26T02:35:00.001-08:00

Last September I wrote a blog on Cymbidium Kusuda Shining and Friends. In one of the two blogs on the subject the hybrid between C. Kusuda Shining and C. virescens was discussed and various forms illustrated. This was before my photography lessons. At that point it was pretty much point and click and hope for the best. My photography teacher has brainwashed me into thinking that pointing and clicking is not good enough. Well, in all honesty I would have to agree with her.

Just to recap on the story of KS and friends. Andy Easton made the wonderful hybrid Kusuda Shining many years ago. This hybrid has proved to be a great parent to a wide range of colourful and interesting hybrids. Since the writing of that blog the hybrid between KS and virescens has been named by Andy. The formal name is now Cymbidium Flying Comet. A very appropriate name really. Some of the cultivar names we have tentatively put on our seedlings before it was named were 'Stella', 'Cosmo' and 'Super Nova'. We must have all seen the same thing in the offspring. Pictures of the parents of C. Flying Comet appear below. The picture of C. goeringii (virescens) is several years old and was taken with a happy-snap camera.

Cymbidium Kusuda Shining

Cymbidium goeringii (virescens)

One of the runts of the litter my orchid grower friend named 'Randall's Gem' as a bit of a joke. He saw this plant as the ugly little brother to the more grand and colourful siblings. I liked it. Actually, my initial impression was not all that great but I took a picture of it anyway. It was not until the photo was downloaded to my computer and projected onto the monitor that the potential of 'Randall's Gem' became evident to me. I called my friend back and ask if I could buy the plant. He was going to sell it off as an no-name pot plant at a local mall! Thankfully, it was saved from a fate worse than death.

I came home and took several pictures of it. None of them all that great.

Since taking that original shot, C. Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem' has come into flower for the second time. This is good as I get a chance to redeem myself and take a better picture. Interestingly, the second flowering of the plant is much better than the first. I like to tease my professional grower friend that the reason the second flowering is so much better is that I am a much better grower than he is. We both know this is not true so we can laugh about it.

What has changed over the past year is that the plant has matured a bit and has been growing in much cooler conditions. I grow it in a shadehouse completely exposed to the elements, except sun of course. I do not push my plants as much with fertilizer either. They tend not to flower themselves to death like my friends plants and tend to be a bit more graceful.

Below in the first picture is C. Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem' on it's first flowering in 2008. The mug shot style is fairly typical of my photographs. One day my photography teacher will knock the police photographer out of me. The second and third photos were taken this morning at about 8:00 am as the sun was shining through the trees. Photograph four was taken at 8:30 pm tonight after the intensity of the sun had dimmed a bit. All four photos are the same plant just taken in different styles, with different camera settings and lighting arrangements. Photograph four is nearly spot on for colour of the flower. It is actually hard to get the colour correct. Green overlaid with pink on the petals and sepals and white with magenta red and yellow on the lip is a real challenge. Too dark and the green bleeds into the pink and makes it browny-red. Too light and the yellow and white of the lip flares and the magenta red turns faded red. Hopefully, I hit some sort of happy medium.

To see larger versions of any of the pictures just click on the photo. It will magically appear twice as big before your very eyes! Hope you enjoy them.

Cymbidium Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem'

(f stop 11, natural light, in shade)

Cymbidium Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem'

(f stop 22, backlit, morning sun, black background)

Cymbidium Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem'

(f stop 22, backlit, morning sun, forest background)

Cymbidium Flying Comet 'Randall's Gem'

(f stop 22, front lit, late evening direct sun, black background)

Cymbidium floribundum or pumilum

2009-01-23T20:26:00.000-08:00

When you make collections of plants strange things can happen. If you collect a genus of plants, like Cymbidium, there are several tacks that you can take. Many people collect hybrids. Collecting hybrids provides you with a never-ending source of new plants. If you are a follower of plant fashions or if you suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder you can constantly replace the old with new. While this can be satisfying it is also expensive. The newest hybrids are the most expensive. If you try to keep at the cutting edge you eventually find yourself buying unflowered hybrids on speculation. If you guess correctly you could be on a winner. If you get it wrong you just wasted a few years of time, effort and expense. At least you may be able to recoup a bit of money by selling your culls off to an unsuspecting 'amateur' or fashion blinded 'novice'. There are literally thousands and thousands of people who support an extensive industry supplying their needs.

Since the rise of environmentalism in the 1960's and 70's there has been a shift away from hybrids to species for the serious collector. The shallowness of fashion was eschewed for the 'connection with the earth' and 'naturalness' implicit in the growing of wild species. Granted, species have always been grown but came close to being completely wiped from collections in the 1950's. The prevailing attitude in the 50's, with vestiges of it persisting until today, is that hybrids are easier to grow and have hybrid vigour. What tosh! Most Cymbidiums are easier to grow than almost any plant. This is attested by the numerous plants sitting on back porches and patios throughout Australia and California. They barely get water, almost never get repotted and inevitably are sunburnt beyond belief but flower happily every year.

Species collectors need to get every species of a genus and usually several forms of each. In a genus like Cymbidium collecting all the species, varieties and forms is fairly straight forward. With under 50 species it is a small genus by world standards. A collection of just species and forms of Cymbidium would be modest, at least as far as collections go.

A slight variation on the species collection is the conservation collection. While the outcome is similar to the species collection, each plant comes from a known location in the wild. This type of collection is usually reserved for botanic gardens, universities and those truly concerned with the conservation of genetic diversity. Occasionally, a rogue collector uses the excuse of conservation to import cheap wild-collected plants from a developing country. I remember clearly in the early 80's, while studying orchids in the Pacific islands, the depredations of unscrupulous orchid collectors. I was taken to get photographs and herbarium specimens of a species orchid. Unbeknownst to me, an American collector had found out where I was going and the subject of my study. He had paid the local villagers what amounted to a huge salary to collect all of the plants of this species they could find. They simply followed me and my guide into the forest and stripped every plant they could find. Hundreds of them. There was absolutely nothing I could do except put my pack on top of several plants and stand in front of another group until they left, satisfied they had gotten every plant. I felt sick.

Believe it or not there is one even more extreme form of collector! This is the type that collects every slight variation there is within a species! This type of collector is not prevalent in the west, at least in Cymbidium. In Asia, particularly in China, single species Cymbidium collecting has a history at least 1,500 years old. Part of the reason for this is that people could only draw on the local species for their collections. To introduce novelty they had to collect all the variations they could from the local populations. In China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan this is the normal style of collection, or at least it was until recently.

One of the main plants that has been the focus of attention for single species collections is the plant we know as Cymbidium floribundum, or alternatively and erroneously as C. pumilum. This plant was originally named as C. floribundum in 1833 by Lindley but for some reason this name was not recognised by Rolfe when he described and named Cymbidium pumilum in 1907. This oversight and renaming of an already named species was recognise and corrected as long ago as the 1960's but people still insist on using the name C. pumilum.

In Australia there is an incredible diversity of groups of people from various countries, including from China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand. It is within these groups of people that you find the tradition of single species collections. Although this type of collecting has diminished through the availability of other plants, some people maintain the traditions they grew up with.

Until fairly recently, most of the forms of Cymbidium floribundum, that were widely available in the west, were fairly non-descript browns with a pale edge or a supposed 'Alba'. This 'Alba' form is actually just a greenish form and not an albino at all. It is betrayed by the red spots on the underside of the column! There are reputedly true albinos of C. floribundum but as Andy Easton says 'there is no proof there is a true albino pumilum'. Buyer beware! Fortunately, a full range of interesting forms of this species are appearing on the market. There is even one commercial grower here that specialises in forms of C. floribundum. He rarely sells his plants and when he does the good quality ones start at Aus. $150.00. Thankfully, he makes a living from selling plants other than C. floribundum.

Over the years a dozen or so forms of C. floribundum have crept into my collection. I didn't purposely collect them. To be totally blunt, C. floribundum is not one of my favourite species. The flowers are generally short-lived, indifferent in colour (for most of them), not fragrant and every bug and its brother loves to eat the flowers. What it does have going for it is that it is easy to grow, clumping up into a specimen plant fast. There are 2N and 4N forms and those with pendulous, arching or upright flower spikes. Plants can range in size from 10 to 30cm tall when fully grown. The best thing is that a fully mature plant will live happily and flower profusely in a 6 inch pot.

While it would have been nice to include pictures of all the forms that I have, to be honest, most of the flowers look identical or much of a muchness. The main variation in most of these forms not being colour but ploidy level, plant size, disposition of the flower spike and number of flowers on the spike. The three I have chosen are three of my favourites and are the most distinct.

The first of these plants is 'Sina'. This plant has particularly dark and narrow petals and sepals with a clearly marked lip. The flower spike is arching and carries upward of 30 well-spaced flowers. This is the first form to bloom in spring. The leaves are also narrower than normal. Overall, the plant is very gracile and delicate to look at. It is actually very tough and a strong grower. This plant was imported from china and is probably a selection of a wild plant. It is a diploid.

Cymbidium floribundum 'Sina'

Cymbidium floribundum 'Pale Face' came to me with Japanese characters on the label. I asked my friend Bin at school to translate for me. It translated to 'The young woman with the pale face'. That number of words would not fit on the label so it got the name 'Pale Face'. It has the most delicate pink spots on the lip that complements the white and contrast in an interesting manner with the green of the petals and sepals. This is a robust grower with nearly upright flower spikes of 25-30 flowers. It is a tetraploid.

Cymbidium floribundum 'Pale Face'

The final selection is one of the most expensive plants in my collection. You don't need to know how much was paid for it. If you did know the cost you might tell my partner, who would not be happy! There are much more important things to do with money!!! Well C. floribundum 'Tokiwa' epitomises everything that the Koreans find attractive in C. floribundum. First and foremost, variegated leaves. 'Tokiwa' has very strongly variegated leaves. It is a white variegation, the most highly prized type. The flowers are very special as well. Unlike most C. floribundums, the petals of this species are fairly wide and the flower is more widely spreading than normal. The colour is simply beautiful. You can see for yourself. The flower spikes are strongly upwardly arching and although they have only 15-20 flowers they are much showier than most other forms. 'Tokiwa' is a tetraploid. One further interesting point with this plant is that the flowers last twice as long as every other form that I grow. This is a real winner of plant. Great leaves, great flowers, and all on an easy to grow compact plant. The Koreans got this one absolutely right.

Cymbidium floribundum 'Tokiwa'

The final plant is not a Cymidium floribundum at all. It is a hybrid made with C. floribundum as one of its parents. Cymbidium Little Aussie 'Justin'. There is another clone of this hybrid that is even more spectacular called 'Honey'. 'Honey' and 'Justin' may in fact be the same plant, just purchased from different growers, variations of intensity of flower colour can vary depending on growing conditions. The other parent of this hybrid is C. Sussex Dawn. It has inherited all the best features of the species; compact plant, easy grower, prolific spiking with lots of flowers, and interesting colours. This plant, by coincidence, is called Little Aussie. It is really appropriate to put this plant on this post. I am writing this blog on the Australia Day long weekend! My friend bred this plant. You will have to agree that he did a great job! Thanks JC.

Cymbidium Little Aussie 'Justin'

The Hidden Crown - Cryptostephanus vansonii

2009-01-22T22:13:00.001-08:00

When it comes to growing classy plants there are few that can match up to the genus Clivia. Everything about them is refined. They are of modest size and modest in their growth rate. The leaves are broad, dark-green straps that in the best forms sit neatly in a fan, one stacked on top of the next, in the form of an open book. The flowers arise from the centre of the plant on a long stalk forming a head of up to 25 or so flowers that nestles just at leaf height or slightly above it. The flowers are not subtle, being bright orange, yellow, red or a combination of these and varying in intensity. The flowers, however, are very regular in shape, at least in the most popular Clivia miniata. The plant in flower looks like an artificial plant. The genus even has royal connections, being named after Lady Charlotte Florentia Clive the duchess of Northumberland. The name of the genus is therefore pronounced Clive-e-a, recognizing the name of the person the plant is named after, not Cliv-e-a!

My first experience of Clivia was at Longwood Gardens just outside of Philadelphia. This huge display garden was set up by Pierre S. DuPont and is carried on today by a committee of management. Longwood is one of the worlds premier gardens. A major feature at Longwood is the the huge set of conservatories. These are large enough to support trees and lawns and expansive beds of ever-changing displays of stunning plants. Each season there is a different set of plants to brighten up the conservatories. In one of the conservatories there is a huge water display, including fountains set amongst landscaped gardens. At one end of this conservatory is a large terrace on which to sit and admire the scenery. On either side of the entrance door there are two huge earthenware pots imported from China and tastefully decorated with patterns. In each of these pots is a creamy-yellow form of Clivia miniata. I might add that the pots are about one metre across and the leaves of the plant arch out over the edge of the pots by about 1/2 metre. These are seriously impressive plants, attractive even when not in flower. When in flower they are breathtaking. The individual cultivar grown at Longwood Gardens is one of the most sought after cultivars of Clivia miniata. A division of this plant sold for US$2200 at the Longwood Gardens Rare Plant Auction held by the Professional Gardener Alumni Association in 2000.

East Conservatory November 2007

The white pyramid at the far end is a trained Chrysanthemum

East Conservatory February 2007

West Conservatory November 2007
Amazingly trained Chrysanthemums

West Conservatory and Fern Floor (in distance) November 2007

My cousin Haydon is in middle of path. The yellow, white and orange flowers are Chrysanthemums!

It was not until several years ago that I actually aquired several plants of Clivia. About 10 years or so ago, Clivia started to flood onto the market here in Melbourne. They became the new fashion in gardens. They became so common that you could buy them in nearly every outlet that sold plants, including supermarkets! Shortly after the first flush of poor quality Clivias hit the market, better forms started coming from more reputable growers. Cultivars such as 'Twins', 'Monk', 'Painted Face and others had wider, shorter and neater leaves and larger, well-shaped orange flowers. Some clever dick predicted the trend for novelty and flooded the market with seedling grown yellow cultivars. These commanded seriously high prices and still do. A seedling with 6 leaves and about 30cm high cost approximately $40. Most of these were several years off flowering. I wonder how many of them actually lived to flower? Yes, I bought one.

My other purchases were several cultivars imported from Japan by a specialist. These were bought as seed for $10 each! Thankfully, Clivia seed is very easy to raise as long as you have the patience. These Japanese Clivias are now 10 years old and have yet to flower. One lives in hope. I might add here that the Japanese and Taiwanese grow Clivia primarily for their leaves and not their flowers. This may explain why I have such beautiful plants and no flowers.

My friend Rob, who is a mad Clivia grower, belongs to a Clivia club. Yes, there are clubs devoted just to growing Clivia. These people are even more seriously weird than that orchid people. They see differences where most people don't. They also have bizarre interpretations of what various colours are. I have yet to see a white or pink Clivia that is not truly yellow or orange. Oh well, maybe if their hope is strong enough they will actually believe their plants are white and pink!

About 8 years ago, Rob went on a trip to New South Wales to do the rounds of his Clivia friends. He always drives so that he can bring back a carload of plants. I told him before he left if he found any dwarf cultivars could he pick me up a seedling or so. Two weeks later one seedling appeared. Woo Hoo! My Clivia collection was up to 6 plants. Being a collection of only six plants means that they get more attention than the collections that have more numerous members. This little seedling was put in a 6-inch pot, watered and fed. I didn't expect flowers for many years.

The following spring I noticed two side growths coming off this very small plant and a flower spike forming in the centre of the plant. It was great! Not only had Rob found me a dwarf plant he found a micro-mini! Seriously, this plant was only 8 inches tall with 6 leaves on the main growth. I moved it to the greenhouse bench to keep it away from slugs and rabbits. This plant was going to bloom come hell or high water. Well, it did bloom but it wasn't a Clivia. The flowers were small and whitish pink. I called Rob asking if he knew what it was. He then called his friend, but as his friend was suffering from dementia he didn't remember Rob and couldn't remember that he actually grew Clivias. No luck there. Well, at least it was in the family Amaryllidaceae. That was a good start.

After a few unsuccessful tries I had luck. It was a Cryptostephanus. Great. Only three species in Cryptostephanus, thank goodness. Corona 6 segments, nope. Corona 12 segments, yep. Flowers darkly pigmented, purple to black, nope. Flowers pale, white to pastel pink, yep, C. vansonii!!!!! Easy. The species was only described in 1943. It is a narrow endemic that occurs in the Bvumba and southern Chimanimani Mountains of Zimbabwe. It grows as a lithophyte or a forest floor plants. The roots are very thick and covered with velamen (a spongy covering that holds water). The roots don't really penetrate into the soil but creep laterally through the leaf litter and mosses of its preferred habitat.

The Cryptostephanus species range in colour from white through pinks and purples to black-purples. It was originally thought that Cryptostephanus would breed with Clivia. The hybridizers hoped to introduce new colours into Clivia especially purples, pinks and whites. Well, it didn't work. They may be closely related according to the taxonomists and they even look it to the average Joe but obviously the plants can tell the difference. Until now there have been no successful hybrids. Avoiding the hand of the hybridist is not a bad thing. Maybe this is the way that Cryptostephanus thumbs its nose at we mere mortals!

One nice thing about this plant is that it has avoided recognition in the horticultural press and nearly every botanical work. This is surprising because it has very beautiful flowers followed by dense clusters of orange-red berries that hang on the plant until it flowers the following year. Flowering last for months, much longer than Clivia. I feel privileged that through a mistake this plant found its way into my collection. The original collector has gotten several crops of seeds from the plant he accidentally gave away. So has Rob. I saved several last year and sowed them around the parent plant. It took them 10 months but there are three baby Cryptostephanus coming up in the pot.

The picture below is what this plant looked like when it flowered this spring. Did I mention they are slightly fragrant? The whole plant is only about 30cm high and grows happily in a 8 inch pot. I can grow 6 of them in the space one Clivia takes up. As they say in California 'this is a keeper'.

BTW, the name Cryptostephanus means Hidden Crown, literally Crypto - hidden and Stepanus - Crown. The names Stephen, Steve, Stefan and Stephanie all come from the same derivation. The name refers to the small corona (petal appendages) at the summit of the tube of the flower. You can see them as little yellow or dark pink 'teeth' at the point where the petals form a tube in the flowers below.

Cryptostephanus vansonii
Flowering October 2008

Cryptostephanus vansonii
September 2009
(Same inflorescence as above)

Cymbidium Maureen Carter

2009-01-18T02:39:00.001-08:00

The internet is a wonderful thing. It has allowed me to communicate with people all over the world that share my interests. Mostly, this communication has been with plant people. Over the past couple of years I have been involved with a forum that deals exclusively with the plant genus Cymbidium. Believe it or not there of several of these forums but the one that I belong to is the one for advanced growers and breeders of these wonderful plants. I used to belong to the general forum for cymbidiums. Can you actually have a general forum for a specific topic? Well, you can. In the general forum there were a lot of people who were just getting into growing and would ask questions that most of us in our 'advanced' forum dealt with 25 or 30 years ago. It can get a bit tedious in a general forum when you really want to get into some seriously challenging discussion.

Over the period of involvement in the Cymbidium forumI have developed some serious pen friends. It is amazing how much you can get to know about certain aspects of people by communicating with them nearly daily, even if it is on the net. We even get to the point of teasing each other about our tastes in plants. Last week one of the guys on the net, (I have actually known this guy for nearly 30 years) mentioned that a plant was very 'Chuckish'. He was referring to my taste in reference to the general form of a Cymbidium flower that was inferred from my various postings on the forum. A couple of days later one of the other members posted a picture of a plant that he labelled 'Ultra Chuckish'. I had been turned into an adjective!!!

The summary of my taste in plants created a good laugh for me. Here I am going along thinking that there is some sort of protection and anonymity on the net. Well after two years of posting they know everything! The good thing about this 'knowledge' is that people actually alert you to certain plants that you may like, based on what they think you will like, gleaned from your postings. Interestingly, nearly 100% of the time they are absolutely correct.

My friend, who lives near me and who drops into the forum as a guest once-in-awhile, gave me some plants several years ago that fit the category of 'Ultra Chuckish'. One of the characteristics of Chuckish is spidery flowers. These types of flowers are not much appreciated in the western countries but are greatly appreciated in Asia. Another characteristic, again shared between myself and the Asian growers, is fragrance. Large, boofy perfectly rounded flowers with no fragrance are not for me. I like my orchids to look like orchids, not artificial, highly bred, showbench plants. The plants I grow will probably never end up with an award. To me though, they are stunning. This is why I grow the plants, for my pleasure, not awards.

Back to the plant my friend gave me. It is called Cymbidium Maureen Carter. It is a beautiful creamy white albino, with spidery flowers produced on bolt upright spikes. The plant is very free flowering and is a really strong grower. I loved it before I knew its history. Oh, it is also fragrant. This is where the net comes in. The plant was bred by my friend Andy Easton, who also bred the wonderful Cymbidium Kusuda Shining (the subject of an earlier post). Andy is one of the mainstays of the forum and has been a greater or lesser part of my life for longer than I would like to admit. Cymbidium Maureen Carter is named after my friend Cliffs Aunt. Cliff is also a mainstay of the forum. How do these men know each other? Well they both used to live in New Zealand and they were friends there. They are back together again on the forum even though Andy lives in the USA and Cliff in Australia.

So how did this plant come about and why when I look at other peoples plants of Maureen Carter do they look so different? The original plant was made with an albino Cymbidium sinense and Sleeping Beauty, itself an albino. So the plants would all come out albino and should be pretty consistant? Well it all depends on the type of albino you use. There are white, green and yellow albino forms of C. sinense. There are also diploid and tetraploids of most of them. Sleeping Beauty also comes in diploid and tetraploid forms and although generally pure white there are forms with pale yellow on the labellum (they are still albino though).

One of the difficulties with registration of orchids is that only the original grex name applies for registration purposes. There is no way to know what form of a plant has been used. For all we know C. Maureen Carter could be made with a dark brown form of C. sinense and a white and yellow albino of Sleeping Beauty. Thankfully, we do know what the original plant was bred from. The sinense used was a white albino and the Sleeping Beauty was also a pure white albino. As is the case in any breeding you can get slight throwbacks and a bit of yellow does show up in the newly opened flowers of C. Maureen Carter. Interestingly, both of the parents were diploid which means that the offspring were also diploid and fertile.

As is the case when something wonderful is created, someone else wants to have it. If they can't get hold of the original plant they remake the hybrid. This is where the skill and knowledge of the breeder comes to the fore. When this hybrid was remade, and it was remade several times, various yellow and green albino C. sinense were used and only the diploid forms. The tetraploids forms of sinense are very rare and exceedingly expensive, those who have them don't let just anyone have them. Unfortunately, the tetraploid forms of sleeping beauty were used in the remake. The result was a mishmash of yellows and greens with indifferent shape and poor coloration. Another real bummer was that all of the seedlings of these diploid X tetraploid crosses were triploid and sterile. Dead ends for breeding!

If you do a google search, for Cymbidium Maureen Carter you will see some of the products of these low quality crossings. Only one picture will come up that is close to the original and that is on the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate website. This last plant is closest to the original that was used by Cliff when he registered the cross. Cliff used C. Maureen Carter 'His and Hers' for registration of the cross. The SBOE plant looks as though it is probably from the original cross. A proper assay would have to be carried out to see if it is a diploid, triploid or tetraploid and therefor capable of breeding. There are a couple of yellowish-green Maureen Carters with the cultivar names 'Dafon' and 'Orchis'. There is even a lurid yellow cultivar called 'Fragrant Princess'. This last one has none of the charm of the original cross and also has a story that goes with it that does not bear repeating in polite company.

The photos are not of the best quality and my photography teacher has given me a 'Could do better' on my report card. Oh well, they were taken before I was getting lessons. I promise never to use a brown sheet as a backdrop for a white/cream flower ever again. and I will improve the light! I must thank Andy and Cliff and my friends on the forum for encouraging me to keep writing these stories. Undoubtedly, they will correct any of my factual errors before you read this post!

Cymbidium Maureen Carter 'Chichester'

Pretty Pelargoniums

2009-01-16T01:45:00.000-08:00

Pelargonium X ardens

One of the real pleasures of lining in a Mediterranean-type climate is the ability to grow a huge range of plants from some of the most botanically rich regions of the world. This type of climate occurs in the Mediterranean (of course), parts of South Africa, Southern Australia and most of California. Temperature variations are much less pronounced in these climates than in the cool temperate and continental climates. The summers may be hot but it rarely truly freezes in the winter, so no need for long-johns here! Winter days, at least in my area, rarely drop below 12-15C even though night temps may drop down close to 0C. The differential between day and night temperatures in both winter and summer can actually be relatively large, 10-15C differentials not being uncommon with occasional larger gaps. Rainfall is relatively modest (620mm per year at my home) with a uneven distribution over the year, heavier and winter/early spring and very little in summer/early autumn.

The climate of my adopted home could not be farther from the northern temperate zone in which I grew up. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA or 'Philly' has summers that are hot and steamy, more like the tropics but maybe a bit warmer. Summer nights, while slightly cooler than the days are still hot and steamy. Winters are cold with frozen ground and snow. The only way I could grow most of the Mediterranean-type plants was to put them outside in summer and in the basement, heated frames or greenhouse during the winter. For the majority of these plants this was a totally unsuitable arrangement. Being predominantly winter-growing plants, the hot, wet summers rotted most of them off when they were trying to rest. winter wasn't much better, either being cooped up in a dark, dank nearly sunless spot or in an enclosed, humid environment with not much more light than the basement in temperatures more like the tropics. where were the cool, damp winters and hot dry summers?

One plant genus we did successfully grow in Philadelphia was Pelargonium. The common species cultivated were mostly species in the section Ciconium, the normal Garden and Ivy-leaved Geraniums and the section Pelargonium, the Scented Geraniums and Regal Pelargoniums (in the USA they call Regal Pelargoniums, Martha Washington Geraniums). These are just two small sections in a huge genus of plants that contains hundreds of species ranging from those a few centimetres tall to large imposing shrubs to 2m tall. Some are geophytes, producing large underground tubers, others thich woody or succulent stems. While most produce 'normal' leaves, others have leaves so finely divided that all that is left of the leaf surface are the veins while others have lost their leaves altogether.

Plant fragrance is a notable characteristic in Pelargonium. The leaves of many have strong fragrances reminiscent of Apples, Oranges, Limes, Lemons, Coconuts, Mints, Roses, Anise, Celery, Camphor or Balm. Some combine the above scents, like lemon-rose, Camphor-rose and mint-rose. While many are pleasantly fragrant, several smell like insecticide or burning hair or plastic. The flowers, while generally not fragrant, occasionally surprise the flower by emitting powerful fragrances. One species in particular, Pelargonium gibbosum, the Gouty Pelargonium (so named because of the lumpy 'swollen joints' of the stem) has the most remarkable fragrance of them all. The flowers lack the showy colours of many of its relatives, being mainly green, sometimes with indistinct brown or reddish dots at the base of the petals. The drabness of the flowers is made up for just before dusk during the flowering season (late spring through autumn). You may not even realise the plant is in flower until you get home late from work one night and smell bananas. That's right, bananas! Remember those banana marshmallow candies in the 1960's and 70's? Dense marshmallow, artificially flavoured banana and molded into the shape of little bananas about 3 inches long. the flowers of Gouty Pelargonium have the exact frangrance of these retro-candies and extremely strong to boot! The flowers of this fascinating plants are pictured below.

By far what attracts most people to these beautiful plants are the colours of the flowers. the range is truly amazing. While mauves, pinks and whites are the predominant colours, greens, yellows, browns, oranges, reds and vivid purples are also in the colour palate. The only colour that does not exist in Pelargonium is a true blue. You need to go to the related genera Erodium and Geranium for true blue. Interestingly, most Pelargoniums have flowers that combine a range of colours in the same flower. It is not unusual to get red, yellow and white in one flower, or white pink and red, or oange and pink, or green and red, the list goes on.

One of the most interesting things about Pelargoniums and the Geraniaceae in general, is the way that they are pollinated. A few are bird pollinated, like Pelargonium fulgidum. but this is rare and pretty much limited to the red-flowered species. A hybrid of P. fulgidum (P. Scarlet Unique) exhibits the qualities of a bird-pollinated Pelargonium. The brilliant red flower with a wide open gap in the the middle of the flower. This bright green gap screams out to the bird 'put your beak here!'. A few of the species are moth pollinated, having white or green flowers and emitting their fragrance at night (P. Gobbosum). Most of the Geranium family are, however, pollinated by bees or flower wasps. The bee/wasp pollinated species for the most part are not fragrant but do provide a nectar reward to the insect. Nothing spectacular there you say? Well, Pelargoniums, Geraniums, Sarcocaulon and Erodium leave nothing to chance when ensuring that the insects know exactly where the nectar reward is and how to enter the flower to get it.

The highly successful Geraniaceae, employ what are called nectar guides. You can clearly see them in most of the pictures below. These nectar quides appear as solid or spotted lines generally on the upper petals of Pelargonium but commonly on all the petals in the genera with regular flowers, Geranium, Sarcocaulon and Erodium. By the way, one of the ways to distinguish Pelargonium ffrom these other genera is by the construction of the flowers - they are zygomorphic. Zygomorphic simply means that the flowers can only be cut in half one way to get two even halves. In Pelargonium this is usually vertically through the centre of the flower. There are five petals in the flower, two produced north of the flowers equator, three below. While the nectar guides are clearly visible to the human eye what must they look like to a colour-blind bee? Thankfully, this has been studied and here are some wonderful infra-red pictures of Geraniaceae on the 'net. These pictures clearly show how stunningly distinct these nectar guides are to a bee!

The orchid flowers around the house are a bit sparse on the ground at the moment so I thought I would turn to the Pelargoniums for a bit of camera fun. Instead of taking pictures of full plants, it was more fun for me to take close-ups of the flowers. The colours are wonderul and provide a real challenge to the photographer to capture them accurately. What is not immediately evident is that even in the plants that do not appear to have nectar guides, like Pelargonium 'The Boar', have veins a different colur to the base colour of the flower which under infrared light stand out as strongly as the nectar guides that are obvious to our eyes.

The majority of Pelargonium species come from Africa, with the greatest concentration in southern Africa. A couple occur in the Mediterranean and a dozen or so are from Australia. Africa and Australia share many Families, Genera and species of plants. From a biogeography point of view this is fascinating and maybe should be the subject of a post? Below is just a small selection of Pelargoniums that are flowering in my garden. These photos were taken on the 11th of January (our mid-summer).

Pelargonium tetragonum

Pelargonium viscossissimum

Pelargonium 'The Boar'

Pelargonium 'Splendide'

Pelargonium 'Scarlet Unique'

Pelargonium rodneyanum (Australian Native)

Pelargonium quercifolium 'Royal Oak'

Pelargonium 'Prince of Orange'

Pelargonium havlasae (Australian Native)

Pelargonium gibbosum (Gouty Pelargonium)

Pelargonium 'Distinction'

Pelargonium australe (Australian Native)

Photography Lessons!

2008-12-21T02:55:00.001-08:00

A scientist living in an 'Artists Community' has its benefits and its drawbacks. On the one hand most of the artists are of the opinion that science is the antithesis of art. Their opinion of scientists, needless to say, is not the most favourable. You can almost imagine the conversation 'We are not concerned about what the names of the plants are or how they work or even if they are rare or endangered, we are concerned with colour, interesting shapes, composition of our works and creating 'artistic' renditions of what we see. Needless to say, this is not an imaginary conversation. It has been heard many times in twenty years. On the other hand the artists have no expectation that the scientists who live in the neighbourhood would have any interest in 'Art'. This lack of expectation from the artists is good. It means that we can do what we want without them ever having to take us seriously.

Twenty years is a long time to live in a neighbourhood and not be visited by one group of people. The scientists, the people who appreciate nature for natures sake and the non-artists are regular visitors to the house. We call each other and talk about things we have seen in the forest or the latest bird to visit. The gardeners come to see the weird plants in flower and to get cuttings. I lost track years ago how many kilos of coffee have been put through the espresso machine for my friendly neighbours who drop in. Not one cup of coffee has passed the lips of an artist in this house. Not because they are not welcome but because they feel there is no need to visit someone who is not 'cool' or in the 'in crowd'. This is an interesting viewpoint that they have. These supposed free-thinking and bohemian artists might get a little bit of enlightenment if they realised what was past the threshold to my house or even in the garden!

The house that I live in is a former artists gallery. Famous Australian artists exhibited their work here twenty years ago. There are some odd spaces in the house that are not really usable; too wide to be a hallway, too narrow to be a room. Even the living room is four times as long as it is wide.The lighting was originally gallery lighting, all halogen spot lights on swivels (now for the most part replaced. The shelves at the far end of the living room are lit. Bookshelves with lights? No, they were for displaying small objet d'art. The walls and shelves are still covered in art but art that I like, not art that the artists up here will ever get a chance to see.

Interestingly, I have always had an interest in art. In 4th grade I was designing and drawing cartoons for a anti-littering campaign. This led on to cartoons figures that were not associated with moral rectitude. When my interest in plants developed so did my interest in botanical art. This led to classes in Bot Art using water colours, pen and ink, pencil and charcoal and even wood block printing. I had the technical skill but not the eye for composition. My shading was beautiful and perspective wonderful but they all looked exactly like they did when they were lying shriveling and dying on the drawing table.

I tried photography. My first camera was an Olympus OM1. A fantastic camera with an incompetant photographer. Very occasionally the stars would come together and a stunner would stare back at me from the freshly printed photograph I actually took. Unfortunately, a strike rate of 1 in 500 - 1000 is not all that good. I persisted but didn't improve. Have you heard the story about men? They will play with a gadget but never read the manual? That was me. To be fair, I did read the manual but it was beyond me. I know, why admit incompetance when you can blame the equiptment.

Things changed when there was a reason to take pictures. Being the slightly pedantic (read as scientific) person that I am, there was a need to keep photographic records of what I was recording in writing. The pictures were better but still looked as though they were taken for a plant catalogue. That was until Dr. Sue came along. Sue is actually a university lecturer in biomedical sciences but she should have been a professional photographer. Actually, she doesn't want to be a professional photographer, hers is purely a pursuit of pleasure through the use of photography. Thankfully, we are good friends so when she said my photos were, well, S__t, I didn't take it bad at all. She wasn't that harsh but you would be well aware what it is like to be told something you think is wonderful is not. It hurts even worse when it comes from someone you respect.

Solution to this sorry and depressing situation? Chuck the camera in the river and never take another photograph? Sounded a good idea but the cost of the camera stopped me from doing that. Sell the camera? No, it might still be useful and it was certainly a better quality camera than the one used for 'happy snaps'. The only solution was to give up the male ego thing and get lessons. And yes, lessons from a women. Thankfully, that woman was Sue. She has been training me for about 6 months now. It takes me awhile and sometimes I slip back but my 'teacher' can't get away from me. Her office is next to mine and we have an agreement that I provide the plants for her pictures.

Until now most of my photos have been of orchids or the odd critter in the garden. That was until friday. There was an oxalis sitting on my desk from a picture taking session for a previous blog. I was a little late getting home from work and the sun was low in the sky, shining through the office window. In the few days that the Oxalis had been sitting on the desk it had turned its leaves to the window. Now the sun was shining through the tops of the leaves and all I could see was the bottom side of the leaves. The tops of the leaves were interesting but the bottoms were absolutely fascinating. It jumped out at me as the most startling colour combination. I wasn't hungry for dinner so I took a picture. Then a few more. Twenty-seven photos later there were several that were passable. Download, Crop adjust white balance and hey presto! The picture below.

Oxalis triangularis

The next day after watering the greenhouse I noticed that the seed heads had burst on a pelargonium species just inside the door. What struck me was the near perfect symmetry of the corkscrew like awns with the furry little pointed seeds all poking out. I carefully lifted it into a spot out of the wind with a dark background and after only 6 pics and a little cropping came up with this.

Pelargonium hirtum

The end of the story? My teacher liked the photos and even used the word gorgeous. It helped that purples are her favourite colours. She also likes hairy things. Maybe that is why she has me as a friend.

Restrepia elegans

2008-12-12T04:09:00.000-08:00

You know you have an obsession when you need to have something around you all of the time. My home is a bit of a botanical ark. The garden beds are filled with collections of various genera of plants the most prominent of which is the genus Pelargonium. The greenhouses and shadehouses protect my collection of Cymbidiums. Even my home office, kitchen and dining room have the odd potted plant on the window sills.

Most of the plants that make it to the house are reminders of family or friends. These permanent house guests occasionally have to share space with a flowering Cymbidium that fleetingly comes for a visit and like all good house guests leaves after a few days. There are not all that many permanent members of the indoor flora but each has a special meaning.

In the corner of the dining room there is one of those old-time brass hanging baskets strung up by long brass chains. The 'basket' contains a 15cm black plastic pot with Zebrina pendula, the beautiful wine red, silver and green Wandering Jew as it was known then I was growing up. This reminds me of my mother. She had jars filled with cuttings of Zebrina that lined a narrow shelf that ran the length of the double ceramic sink that itself ran the length of the windows.

Above my sink is a pot of Oxalis triangularis, the two-toned purple leaved form. My favourite Aunt, Aunt Doris, grew a plant of this in an antique ceramic pot on a small table covered in a doily at the top of the stairs to the upstairs bedrooms. Even in the darkest days of winter it provided a stark contrast to the bleak trees and snow on the other side of the glass. Here was this apparently delicate little plant with bright perky leaves of the most intense colour topped with the most delicate pink flowers on long stalks. I always wondered how it survived. Now that mine has been alive in the same place for at least the past 19 years with only being repotted twice in that time I am starting to understand.

Oxalis triangularis

On my home office desk there is a dwarf Japanese cultivar of Raphis excelsa, the Lady Palm. It is growing in a specially designed and handcrafted pot made by a friend. Some reminders remain private.

My work office desk and windows were a bit bare. The walls have a couple of drawings of some of my special plants. I really wanted something living. The office air is very dry and most plants last a couple of days before showing stress. My approach was a bit lateral. When I was a young man terrariums were all the rage. There were hundreds of designs including plain old jars to aquariums to specially designed enormous glass vessels with narrow necks and large bulbous bases. They even sold special terrarium tools to plant these long-necked bottles. Of course I had a set.

One day we were cleaning up the marine lab making space for one of the new students. We opened one of the locked cabinets and inside was the most amazing arrays of aquariums, all with matching glass lids. I am a sucker for a well built anything! These aquariums were obviously lovingly made. One particular size took my fancy, they were about 30cm long, 20cm high and about 15cm deep. Four end-to-end would fit comfortably on each of my office window sills. I have three windows in my office! The temperatures in my office do not fall below 15C at night and do not go above 25C during the day, every day of the year! Permanent tropics.

The aquariums on the south-facing window I filled with various species of Jewel Orchids; Anoectochilus, Ludisia, Goodyera, Macodes. They look great all snuggled up in live sphagnum moss with their lids on. Once a year I have to push the glass across to leave a small gap for the flower spikes to poke through. After they flower the spikes are cut off and the lids put back into place. Life is peaceful again.

On the windowsills that face east I have a collection of little Masdevallias, Restrepia and a few of the other miniature South American Pleurithallids. In the past few weeks one particular little sweetie has been blooming its head off. This is the extremely delicate and very refined little orchid, Restrepia elegans. The whole plant is all of maybe 6-7 cm tall. The flower is huge for the size of the plant being almost 2 cm long along the axis of the fused lateral sepals. The dorsal sepal and petals are just about as long but quickly taper into long narrow threads each topped with a little knob that emits pheromones to attract the pollinator. It literally smells like female wasps at least to a male wasp. The males must be pretty blind (aren't most males when they are pursuing a sexual reward?).

This plant provided me with another lesson from my photography teacher. How to take a picture of such a tiny plant and flower and to get it looking good. I think the second shot is much better. It is hard to get good depth of field when you are working with such tiny subjects. These little fellas will go on flowering for months so there will be plenty of opportunity to keep trying to get a good shot. In the meantime, when the boredom of some tasks at work start to get to me or some person is being, well, you know, difficult, I can always look to the windowsill and see something of beauty that asks nothing of me but provides me with so much.

Restrepia elegans

God Only Knows and Progeny

2008-12-11T02:09:00.000-08:00

One of the my students at school is working on the taxonomy of native Tobacco (Nicotiana sp) in South-Eastern Australia. In 1910 it was generally assumed there where two species; a white flowered one that was widespread and abundant and a small greenish/yellow flowered species that was restricted to the drier inland areas. By the 1950's the white flowered species was split into 3; a hairy inland form, a hairy coastal form and a widespread hairless form. Not being content to leave it at this, a few people in the 1980's decided that there was another 'species' lurking around. Why did they think this? It did not behave itself and conform to the 4 described species. Plants are supposed to behave the way humans want them to!

Along comes our student, looking for a project to carry out. At the same time a student at another university was also looking for a project to do. As happens occasionally, both of them decided to work on the same group of plants. You could almost see the daggers being drawn as they planned how to get rid of each other and claim the project all for themselves. Thankfully, another solution soon became apparent. They worked together. One took the genetic side of the project and the other the morphological and ecological side. A pretty good split both were happy with.

Although the results are only preliminary they are fascinating none-the-less! Genetically, the plants are all more or less identical. All the bands on the gels light up in all the same places. Several different methods have been used and all show the same thing. Morphologically and ecologically, there are 5 distinct entities. Each has its own hair type and degree of hairiness. Each grows on a different geology and soil type. Statistical analysis of all of the morphological and ecological traits clearly shows there are 5 distinct entities with a greater than 95 percent accuracy. How could this be? What is going on here?

All life has genes. Genes are what control, amongst other things, what an organism looks like and how it behaves. But is it simply genes that dictate these things? Genetically, humans (Homo sapiens) are more or less identical and belong to the same species. Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are all dogs, and cats (Felis domesticus) are all cats. There is another little thing called gene expression. The environment and a range of other factors can get a gene to either turn on or turn off. As these genes turn on it could dictate hairy or not hairy, or drought tolerant or not drought tolerant. Could this be going on with the Tobacco species in Australia?

I love to talk about inheritance in Cymbidiums. One of my local friends and I spend hours every other week or so pouring over plants looking at how various parents are expressed in the progeny. Between the two of us we grow a shipload of seedlings . As you probably guessed from previous posts there can be a great deal of variation in seedlings of the same cross. Some parents have strong influence, others are barely detectable in the offspring. What causes this variation? They all have the same parents and they all came from the same seed capsule? In the case of Cymbidium hybrids it may simply the various genes combining in different ways but could gene expression play a role as well?

As you will be familiar, I belong to a forum on the internet that deals only with plants in the genus Cymbidium. By internet standards this forum does not contain a large group of people but they are all as nutty as I am about Cymbidiums. We talk about lots of things, generally related to Cymbidium although every now and again we stray off the main topic! Occasionally there is a discussion on the Cymbidium forum that is enlightening and sparks the interest of a wide range of forum members. My last post, on Cymbidium God Only Knows, was in response to a discussion on the forum. The link in that post took you to a couple of pictures of C. God Only Knows 'Geyserland' taken by one of the forum members names Ha Bui. I have never met Ha Bui but from discussion on the net I like him and we have a friendship of sorts. More like pen pals. I am sure we would get along well if we were ever to meet.

My habit of posting 'progeny' blogs has sparked a bit of interest and people are encouraging me to carry on with it. To further this cause, Ha Bui thought it would be great if I posted a blog on Cymbidium God Only Knows (GOK for short) and its progeny. He would supply the photos and I would assemble it and put some words to it. I am not sure where he lives but he is obviously sound asleep while I am at work. After a little to and fro, the pictures all arrived safe and well. Unfortunately they arrived just as I was heading to work this morning. So here I am at 10:30 at night finishing off a joint project between Ha Bui and me. I hope you like it!

Thanks for the photos Ha. I hope you enjoy what has been done with them.

Cymbidium God Only Knows 2N

(photo by Chuckie)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland'

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland'

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Yowie Flame

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Paul Robeson

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Paul Robeson

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Paul Robeson

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Paul Robeson

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium Paul Robeson (Left)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Paul Robeson (Right)

(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Hazel Fay
(photo by Ha Bui)

Cymbidium God Only Knows 'Geyserland' X C. Mizuha Okoda

(photo by Paula)

Cymbidium God Only Knows

2008-12-09T00:18:00.000-08:00

Cymbidium God Only Knows 2N
(hookerianum used as the pod parent)

Friends on the web have been talking about this pretty little primary Cymbidium hybrid that goes under the name God Only Knows. Maybe one of them can inform me how it got this highly unusual name. It is an interesting hybrid because it is made between two quite distantly related plants within the genus. The one parent is Cymbidium floribundum (formerly known as C. pumilum) which is a small plant, rarely over 20 cm tall with flowers about 2 cm or slightly more across. The other parent is Cymbidium hookerianum (formerly known as C. grandiflorum) which, by contrast, is a large plant, upwards of 1 m tall with flowers 10 cm or more across. It is not unusual for crosses of such disparate species to not produce offspring and when they do, the young 'uns can be sterile or close to it.

Something went terribly right with this cross which is proving to be a very good parent in its own right. First of all, The taxonomists may have it all wrong, the plants may be more closely related than originally thought. The other thing is that breeders have figured out that if you double the chromosome count of the parents or the offspring, fertility can be restored.

When breeding plants so disparate in size, it is normal practice to use the larger plant/flower as the male (pollen parent) and the smaller as the female (pod parent). It is more probable that the pollen tubes from the larger will reach the ovaries of the smaller. Pollen tubes in most cases have a limited ability to increase in length. If pollen from the smaller flower was used on the larger flower it is highly likely that the pollen tubes will not elongate sufficiently to reach the ovaries. Just to contradict myself sometimes mating smaller flowers on to larger flowers does work!

Most of the Cymbidium God Only Knows appear to have been made with C. floribundum (pumilum) as the pod parent. This is evidenced by the general appearance of the offspring that more closely resemble the size and appearance of C. floribundum. Several years ago a friend of mine did the cross in the reverse order, using C. hookerianum (grandiflorum) as the pollen parent. Interestingly, while you can still clearly see C. floribundum in the offspring, the C. hookerianum parent is more strongly expressed. Just to confuse things even more, he used a green form of C. floribundum so as not to get a brownish flower. Compare this form of God Only Knows with my form. You will need to go to message 7 and open the jpg's.

Now the comparison between my plant and the breeders plant is not all that fair. My form has the normal ploidy level or 2N. The form pictured on the Cymbidium Forum has double the number of chromosomes or 4N. Most would find the breeders plant more attractive. Well, maybe not me as I tend to like the more spidery flowers. There has been no reports about the fragrance of the one pictured on the forum but mine has a beautiful fragrance. As you can see from the picture above, mine has spots instead of solid patches of colour and is much greener. Pretty isn't it?

The best part of this cross, in any of its forms, is that it is particularly cold tolerant, it will happily grow and flower profusely in a 15 cm pot and the flowers will last a good month in the middle of winter! It overcomes some of the shortcoming of both parents and emphasizes the strengths. Cymbidium floribundum flowers are short-lived and so-so in colour in most of its forms. It is however a superb grower, forms a specimen plant in no time at all and will flower regularly even after repotting or division the previous season. Cymbidium hookerianum on the other hand has the most stupendous large green fragrant flowers that last for months. Unfortunately, it is a large plant, hard to flower and tends to drop its flower buds if conditions are not just right.

Cymbidium God Only Knows is a very reliable and tough little hybrid that should be more popular. It forms specimen plants easily, flowers profusely and is fragrant and attractive. Even the leaves are a pleasant sight on a well grown plant. In the words of E.A. Bowles this plant 'Pays its rent'. Well, he was actually refering to Cyclamen hederifolium but it could equally apply to this plant.

There is a little post script to add to this blog. My friend Cliff from Gympie informed me of the source of the name God Only Knows! He said in a post 'This plant got it's name when Andy was given a flask of it in New Zealand by a hobbist grower who made the cross with the comment "God Only Knows what will come out of it!"'. Seems pretty appropriate considering the parents!

Apparently there is a post script to the post script! The original cross was made by Grant Bayley and a flask of it was traded with Andy Easton for some Cymbidium plants. The plant was later registered by Norbert Gomes mistaking Geyserland as the originator of the cross. Apparently, Norbert Gomes named the plant after the Beach Boys song "God Only Knows" and not because he was unsure of the parentage. It is amazing how fast the story can be corrected when you put things on the net, and sometime by the people actually involved. Thanks Andy!

Cymbidium insigne subsp. insigne for Andy!

2008-12-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

Cymbidium insigne 'Alice'

In a recent posting on an international forum, one of the worlds if not the worlds best hybridizers of orchids made a very bold statement. This is a part of his post.

‘I stand by my long-held position that about 50% of the Cymbidium species are worthless for hybridizing and just space wasters in a collection. They are as insignificant as the species fanatics who grow them in most cases. I would sooner have five different forms of C. insigne than 500 of the minor species in any of their color forms.’

Now I could have been offended by such a statement as over half of my orchid collection is composed of species Cymbidiums. It is interesting though. My first encounter with the person from which the above quote emanated was in England nearly 30 years ago. It is amazing how knowing the particular characteristics of a person for such a long time tempers reactions and can even cause a bit of mirth.

In July 1980 my parents saw me off at Philadelphia International Airport. My poor Mother was doing her best to hold back her tears, my Father thankful that he was finally rid of another of his 7 children, four down – three to go. In the words of John Schumann from the Australian folk group Redgum ‘I was only 19’ (a slight underestimation but I had to use the quote). The thoughts going through my mind were torn, ecstatic at the thought of starting a new adventure and grieving as this meant that I would not see my family for three years.

This new adventure was the opportunity to go to England to pursue the non-human love of my life, orchids. You see, the year before I had applied for the Eric Young Orchid Scholarship at the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley (Woking, Surrey, England GU23 6QB). The address was burned into my mind. The blue airmail letter offering me the scholarship was tucked neatly and tightly in my carry bag. It was the physical reminder of my destination as I was desperately trying to let go of my physical attachments in America. I cried half way across the Atlantic. I stopped after that because it was obvious that the plane was not going to turn around.

The day I arrived it was cold and gloomy, little did I realise that this was normal weather in my new home. On descent from 38,000 feet we passed through 4 distinct layers of clouds, the lowest only several hundred metres from the ground and reaching almost right to the land surface. Thankfully, it thinned a little bit just before we touched down so the passengers and the pilot could see the tarmac. I was met at the airport by the driver from the RHS Garden and taken to temporary accommodation until my flat was ready. The lady of the house showed me to my room and asked if I would like breakfast. Being the polite American (yeah, yeah they do exist), the invitation was accepted. After a quick freshen-up breakfast was served up in the kitchen. Maggie said she had prepared a traditional English breakfast; Fried eggs, fried bacon, fried bread and weak milky tea. One look at it and my stomach wanted to void its contents. We never had fried food when we were growing up and you never had milk in tea!!! I ate it.

A whole two days after arriving and after being shown around the gardens and my new workplace I was whisked off to the RHS Halls at Vincent Square to steward the RHS Orchid Committee. My role was to record the names of the plants brought in for judging on cards, see if there were drawings of previous award winners related to the plant and physically walk the plant around to each of the Judges. The judges would then poke and prod the flowers and made affirmative or negative grunting noises. After this initial pass around of some persons carefully grown plant, the committee would do one of several things; dismiss the plant, call for a second look or discuss/argue its merits or otherwise.

The judges were, at least to me at the time, very intimidating. The Chairman was Maurice Mason, a hulking bulldog of a man who obviously intimidated the other judges as well as the steward. He clearly had a sharp intellect and vast knowledge of plants. He was always the first to suggest dismissal of the plant. Dr. Geoffrey Hercklots was my favourite judge. Dr. Hercklots was a slightly built, quiet and a very thoughtful man. Being the taxonomist of the group he would confirm the identity of the plant if there were doubts. He was always very generous to me and had no trouble forgiving my mistakes. I recognized Dr. Hercklots immediately as there was a picture of him examining a Phalaenopsis in the April 1971 edition of National Geographic. The article in National Geographic, entitled ‘The Exquisite Orchids’ is what really kicked along my interest in orchids. Every word and picture of that article is burned into my memory even to this day.

There were a gaggle of other judges that would come more or less regularly. Marcel Le Couffe, Joyce Stewart, Ray Bilton, Brian and Wilma Ritterhausen and Keith Andrews just to name a few. It wasn’t until the following spring, at one of the big flower shows that the originator of the quote in the first paragraph sailed into view. Periodically there were eminent persons from other countries. At this spring show it was Andy Easton from New Zealand. From the minute he walked into the room you knew he commanded respect; the stance, the swagger, the ‘take charge’ attitude. Here was this handsome younger man with a great tan and a voice that would make an American sound like they were whispering and a laugh to match. This man was such a contrast to the others in the room. The much older, staid, porcelain-skinned, English judge’s seemed to demure to this man and hang on his every word, even though you didn’t really have to listen to be able to hear. I must admit it was great to have someone in the room who was not 3-4 times my age!

One of the memories of this meeting was a plant that I exhibited, Cymbidium Caroll (Alexanderi x eburneum). It is like a very large and shapelier C. eburneum. It was breed in 1927 but had been ‘lost’ to cultivation until I located a plant in the collection of the RHS Garden Wisley. Half of the plant went home with Keith Andrews. I have always wondered what happened to it. I have read that additional plants have turned up in Japan. Could this have come from the plant at Wisley?

Being a steward of the RHS Orchid Committee has certain benefits. Besides being exposed to the luminaries of the field and some of the best plants in existence, I had access to all the past records of the committee. This included a hand drawn painting of each of the award winning plants. These were stored in cabinets in the judging rooms. Each month I would get to go through them to pull out images of past winners to compare them with the present offerings. Many times I would go up a couple of hours early so that I could just look through the collection.

One of the plants that appeared repeatedly in the drawings was Cymbidium insigne. At least eight different cultivars of this species had been awarded between 1907 and 1931. This is an impressive record for a species. Below is a list of those early awards.

FCC 1907 ‘Glebelands’

FCC 1908 ‘Splendens’

FCC 1908 ’Superbum’

AM 1917 ’Album’

AM 1923 f. rhodochilum

AM 1923 ‘Saint Andre’

AM 1928 ‘Mrs Carl Holmes’

FCC 1931 ‘Bieri’

Interestingly, some of these cultivars still exist in cultivation! There are undoubtedly additional awarded plants, but these were only the ones conferred by the RHS Orchid Committee in the early years.

You will know by now that it is my penchant to seek out the more ‘interesting’ plants, be they species, primary hybrids or what are affectionately known as ‘Vintage’ hybrids. Now I know that Andy has said that he would happily have a collection of five C. insigne cultivars in preference to a collection of 500 various forms of the other species. For his sake and for anyone else that is interested, I have photographed seven forms of C. insigne subsp. insigne, a small portion of the numerous forms that I presently grow. At some later date I will include the others, including various forms of C. insigne subsp. siedenfadenii, a more recently described subsp. from Thailand.

Cymbidium insigne 'Album' AM/RHS

Cymbidium insigne 'Snow White'

(a true albino)

Cymbidium insigne 'Alba' X 'Album'

Cymbidium insigne (cooperi) 'Plush'

Cymbidium insigne 'Julian'

Cymbidium insigne 'Atlantis'

Cymbidium insigne 'Pink Sands'

Cymbidium insigne 'Rosa'

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl'

2008-11-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

Several years ago a friend and I went to a Cymbidium show at Ararat. Ararat is an old town in western Victoria near to the famous Grampians Range. We decided to make a weekend of it as this very pretty little town is about 3 hours drive from where I live. There is nothing worse than arriving at any orchid show more than 1/2 an hour after opening. Get there late and you will totally miss out on the sales bench!

The sales bench at this particular show was, how to say this politely, not all that interesting. My taste ranges into the interesting and unconventional. So many of the plants for sale were 'showbench quality', code for big, round and boring. One of the nurseries was an outfit from New Zealand. Nearly all of the table of this seller was covered in flasks of seedlings with just a small pile of bare root divisions of plants in plastic bags.

I rummaged through the plastic bags and found some very interesting plants. There was a very dark form of Cymbidium Cricket, a primary hybrid between C. devonianum and C. madidum. Cymbidium madidum is a large rainforest species and an Australian native species. There is a picture of C. Cricket in a previous post. In another bag was a plant with the name C. Chiisana 'Geisha Girl' . It was not in flower but owing to the strange mix of Chinese and Japanese names I thought it might be interesting.

Like you do, I grabbed both bags of C. Cricket and the only bag of C. Chiisana. After sorting through the flasks and putting a few aside, it came time to pay. As the money was flying out of my coffers the question inevitably was put to the stall holder 'So what is C. Chiisana?'. He said 'hold on a minute' and turned to the person you should always ask when you don't know something, the wife. 'Is that flower of 'Geisha Girl' still around?' She reached into the rubbish box under the bench, pulled out a scrunched-up plastic bag and after a bit of todo dug out a shrivelled and crushed flower. 'Aw Sh_t, another little brown thing' went through my mind but the money had already departed my possession. I put on my best smile and exclaimed that it looked a very interesting little flower. It is hard to tell quality from a bit of dead plant material.

After a trip home the next day through an unseasonable snow storm, the plants were potted and put in the greenhouse. Cymbidium Cricket, being one of my favourite primary hybrids, got pride of place hanging from the rafters at the far end of the greenhouse. I wouldn't be able to miss them when they flowered the next year. And flower they did! These two C. Cricket obviously liked their new home and nearly doubled in size and flowered beautifully. The C. Chiisana was put on the benches with the other Australian native hybrids. By this time there was the need to find out what this odd plant was. Turns out it was registered in 1989 by a Nakoyama. A Japanese name for a hybridizer is always a good sign that there might be something interesting ahead.

Cymbidium Chiisana turns out to be a hybrid between a small reddish hybrid made in 1961 - Cymbidium Mimi and the Australian native species C. canaliculatum. I thought this might be interesting. I used to grow C. Mimi and although not the most spectacular Cymbidium it was free flowering and had a nice colour. If they used C. canaliculatum 'Sparksii' as the other parent, the progeny would be nice little compact, highly floriforous reds that may be a bit difficult to grow and possibly bloom in the cooler climes of Melbourne. You would think a hybridizer would use a red with a red, wouldn't you?

Well, all seemed to be going along well until there was the need to go to a conference overseas. My partner and I were talking one day on the phone and the question was asked 'was there anything sitting on that upturned pot on the end bench in the upper greenhouse?'. My heart sunk. I kept my specimen plant of a particularly fine form of C. eburneum on that pot to ensure that it got a bit of extra air movement. Nothing more was said until I got home a couple of weeks later. I went for a quick look around the collection to see how the 'Children' had gone while I was away. I started to feel sick the more I looked. Oh no, this couldn't have happened.

It did happen. For the third time since living at my present address I had been robbed. None of the valuables from the house, tv and computer still there, paintings still on the walls. This was much worse. Everywhere I looked there were holes on the benches where plants used to grow. Out came the inventory and down the benches I went recording the babies that were still there. The special C. eburneum was gone. The albino's were gone. The C. insigne were all gone. Aww *@%#, all the natives were gone as well as the primaries involving natives. Cymbidium Chiisana was gone.

Thank goodness, whoever got the plants didn't go through the propagation house. Backbulbs of most of the plants that went west were in the prop house. The Police were called, a list of plants provided, estimated cost tallied. Not a good feeling. I just had to accept they were lost and gone forever. The worst feeling was that whoever stole the plants was someone I knew and someone that knew the value of the plants. They only took the best.

I won't go into how I found out where some of my plants ended up but suffice to say a few of them came back to me. My lovely 20 year old C. eburneum was scorched and shriveled beyond belief and nearly brought me to tears. Some were totally dead. Interesting, C. Chiisana was looking lush and had growths twice the size of the growths it threw under my care. I thought, oh maybe it likes it a bit drier. There had to be some knowledge gained from this whole sorry episode. Cymbidium Chiisana got hung from the rafters in the shadehouse. It loved it. The growths matured and it sat there most of the winter. As with most of the C. canaliculatum hybrids the watering gets cut right back in winter, only enough to stop them from looking like prunes.

A couple of months ago I wondered if C. Chiisana was going to bloom, as most of the other C. pumilum type hybrids were showing spikes or were already in flower. As I lifted down the basket two big fat spikes as long as my thumb were poking up from the side of the plant facing the sun. Six weeks later out the flowers came.

While the plant was still in bud I went one more time to see if there was a picture of what the flower might look like. Santa Barbra Orchid Estate (SBOE) had a pic of C. Chiisana 'Kristen'! Funnily enough this pic was only put up in mid-May of this year. My heart got a bit of a flutter. Although not spectacular C. Chiisana 'Kristen' is exactly as you would expect from a hybrid between C. Mimi and C. canaliculatum 'Sparksii'. The buds were dark so hopefully mine would be just as beautiful. My heart sunk a bit when the flowers opened. It was in fact a little browny thing just like the smashed flower I had seen at the Ararat Cymbidium Show. How disappointing. Initial observations, however, can be very misleading!!! When the flowers opened the true beauty of the plant was revealed. The C. canaliculatum used was not 'Sparksii' but a normal spotted form. The results were radically different from the SBOE C. Chiisana 'Kristen'.

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl', as you can see is a little ripper. The lip is so pretty, being pure sparkling white with very dark red spots and edged in maroon-red. The very edge of the lip is a pinkish red which makes the overall lip look sharper than it actually is. Just behind the tip of the callus there is a pinkish blush, clearly seen in the second picture. It contrasts very nicely with the yellow overlaid with red of the petals and sepals. It is actually hard to describe in words the complexity of the colouring of this flower. The overall impression of the flower is brownish from a distance with a clear, sharply contrasting lip. When you get up close you can really see the subtleties. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl'

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl'

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl'

Cymbidium Chiisana 'Geisha Girl'

Cymbidium lowianum primary hybrids and a couple of others

2008-11-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

In 1974 I enrolled in horticulture at our local vocational technical school in Delaware County just west of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The first year of Vo-tech was spent in the inner-urban suburb of Folcroft where we studied landscape architecture and floriculture. Our teacher was a very large man named Mr. Pleasant. He was. He encouraged our nascent interest and help steer us away from the rough-heads that occupied the majority of the courses. Folcroft, then and now, can not be classified as having reached the lofty heights of lower middle class. Many of the students were put in Vocational Technical School as they were scholastically challenged. I like to think my reasons for attending were because of interest. Because of my size, awkwardness and choice of career, it was not unusual for me to get beat up by Mike Albany, the biggest, strongest, meanest kid on the bus. He called me 'Burpee' as my favourite pastime during that first year was to memorize all the plants that occurred in the Burpee Seed Catalog. My right shoulder was constantly bruised that whole first year. I hated getting on the bus at my home high school and traveling the 1/2 hour to Vo-tech and then back again.

Second and thirst year were an absolute pleasure. Instead of being bussed to the inner suburbs we were transported through the forest to Ridley Creek State Park and the old Jeffers Estate (see below). The story goes that old man Jeffers went bankrupt and the state took over his property and converted it into a state park, namely Ridley Creek State Park. The state, making every attempt to utilize the facilities, transfered the Vocational Technical horticultural course from Folcroft to the old stable house at Ridley Creek. The gardens and greenhouses would provide just the right environment for young students studying plants. For me, apart from the wonderful plant treasures, was the relief of not having to be exposed to ruffians.

As you can see from the photo below, the house was monsterous with servents quarters and a ballroom. The gardens were magnificent with a woodland garden, a formal fountain garden, several walled gardens each containing either roses, peonies, herbs or herbaceous perennials. In the woods above the house, and just conveniently out of sight, was a greenhouse complex. These greenhouses were originally used to supply flowers, potted plants and winter vegetables to the main house. As was the custom of very wealthy estate owners, there were various collections of rare or unusual plants.

The Jeffers Estate in winter. Ridley Creek State Park, Media, Pennsylvania.

The greenhouses were of the type that were build around the turn of the century or slightly earlier. The foundations were approximately 4 feet high and composed of the local mica-schist rock, the gables of wrought iron. The size of the greenhouses matched the size of the house. A main greenhouse approximately 100 feet long, 30 feet wide and 20 feet high ran north-south. At either end and running west were to smaller houses about half as big as the main greenhouse. In the center and to the east ran a small greenhouse that connected the main greenhouse to the potting shed and boiler room. To the west between the north and south greenhouses were a series of 6 foot deep cold frames lined with the same local rock as the foundations.

The south-west greenhouse was set aside primarily for cut-flower roses and winter storage of the large pots of tender shrubs and trees, as well as Azaleas and Hydrangeas forced for winter flowering. The north-west greenhouse was for cutflowers as well, predominantly Carnations, Snapdragons, Bachelors Buttons, Gypsophila, Chrysanthemums and some Cymbidiums. The northern 2/3rds of the main greenhouse was used for potted seasonal plants, Easter Lilies, Poinsettias, Chrysanthemums. The southern third of the main house was for the tropical plants. This house was fascinating with huge pots of Coffee trees, Oleanders, Eucharis, Ferns, Bananas and of course orchids. My favourite orchid was a huge plant of Schomburgkia tibicinus (now Myrmecophila tibicinus) which sent out 3-4 metre flower spikes and always came out after we had finished school. Thankfully, I lived close to the park and could easily travel down to see it in bloom through the glass.

Mr. Bigler, our teacher, recognised that I had a penchant for plants and a particular interest in orchids. Each student had a section of the greenhouse that we looked after. Thankfully, the orchid benches and the cut flower greenhouse with the Cymbidiums were allocated to me. Now most of the Cymbidiums had obviously been there a long time and were mainly the early diploid hybrids. Interestingly, Cymbidium lowianum, and several that looked remarkably like C. Pauwelsii. I remember most of them being in the yellow, brown, green range with small flowers on tall spikes and flowering from easter onwards.

The fact that most of the Cymbidiums in the Jeffers collection were C. lowianum and its hybrids is not surprising. The flowers of C. lowianum itself can last 3 months if you periodically wash the dirt and dust off the flowers and keep the slugs and bugs off. They are easy to grow and produce long arching sprays of 20-30 or more, modest sized flowers that cut well.

Boxall, a plant collector in the mid to late 1800's collected plants of the species we now know as C. lowianum in 1877 in the hills of Myanmar. It was not originally thought to be a distinct species and was given varietal status under Cymbidium iridioides (giganteum at the time). A couple of years later it was finally recognized as distinct and given the name Lowianum after the men who had contracted Boxall to collect plants for them, Messrs Low. The original form was green with brown tinges on the petals and sepals and a bright yellow and white labellum accented by a bright to dark red patch shaped like the letter V and a central pencil line of the same colour. It was in many respects similar to the plant pictured below.

Cymbidium lowianum var. lowianum

Amongst populations of the normal coloured form, albino forms occasionally occur. These have been, in the past, been given the varietal name concolor. As these rare albinos appear in populations of otherwise normal coloured forms it is not appropriate to call them varieties, a designation usually assigned to wild plants that are reproductively isolated from other forms. It is even doubtful that these albinos should even be given a cultivar name as they are not all derived from the same plant and vary considerably. Early horticulturalists recognized several distinct albino sorts and named them var. viride and var. flaveolum. The form commonly found in cultivation at the moment goes under the name 'Concolor' and is a pleasant clear green with a yellow and white lip. The bright red patches found on the labellum of the normal coloured form are, in 'Concolor' replaced with a bright yellow patch.

Cymbidium lowianum 'Concolor'

The hybrid Cymbidium Garnet was made in 1915 using a normally coloured C. lowianum var. lowianum crossed with C. sanderae (syn. C. parishii var sanderae) The first of the next three pictures shows the results of this original cross.

Cymbidium Garnet

In more recent times, Andy Easton and several other noteworthy hybridisers have been using 'superior' forms of the wild species to remake some of the early hybrids. Here are the results of more recent breeding.

Cymbidium Garnet 'Orange Glow'

'Orange Glow' has as it's parents Cymbidium lowianum var. i'ansonii, sometime recognised as a the distinct species C. i'ansonii. Variety i'ansonii differs from var. lowianum in that the base colour of the flower is yellow-brown and the V-shaped patch is orange-red.

Cymbidium Garnet 'Greenie'

The result when you use C. lowianum 'concolor' with C. sanderae is basically a flower with green sepals and petals and an essentially white lip with red patches. 'Greenie' is the 2N version of this cross. Other forms, some of them 4N, of this same cross also exist but were not in flower this weekend when I took the pictures! The 4N forms are the same colour, some clearer, but the flowers are better shaped and larger.

Cymbidium Pauwelsii was registered in 1911 and has as its parents C. lowianum and C. insigne. The range of possibilities of crossing the many forms of both of these parents has resulted in plants that range from brown through pinks to peach and yellows. Below are just a couple examples of different forms. One of the most spectacular of the recent remakes of this hybrid is the albino form of Pauwelsii called 'New Horizon'. The 4N version is a very shapely and bright yellow, rivaling some of the more complex hybrids. The two below hold their own charm with tall arching spikes and free-flowering habit.

Cymbidium Pauwelsii 2N

Cymbidium Pauwelsii 4N

Both of the above forms of C. Pauwelsii are the result of crossing a C. lowianum 'Concolor' with a pink form of C. insigne. Both came from the same cross and seed pod but responded differently to the chemical used to convert them from diploid to tetraploid. The first one did not respond but the second did. Increasing the ploidy levels of plants can increase the size and intensify the the colours. This is exemplified in the two plants above.

If we change the variety of C. lowianum used in C. Pauwelsii to var. i'ansonii the result is very different. This cross was originally registered in 1919 when var. i'ansonii was still recognised as a species. The name given to C. i'ansonii with C. insigne is C. Ceres. The two forms below came from two separate crossings using different forms of C. insigne.

Cymbidium Ceres 2N

Cymbidium Ceres 'Florence Mausteller' 4N

When C. lowianum was crossed with C. tigrinum (a miniature species) the result was the delightfully small but remarkably perky C. lowgrinum. Cymbidium tigrinum brings down the size of the hybrid plant but also reduces the flower count. More recent introductions of more robust forms of C. tigrinum have overcome the massive reduction in flower count of the offspring bringing it back up to about 10-12 for modern C. Lowgrinum.

Cymbidium Lowgrinum 'Francis'

Probably one of the most famous of the primary hybrids of C. lowianum is the very first Cymbidium hybrid ever made - C. Eburneo-lowianum. This hybrid took the multi flowered arching green C. lowianum and crossed it with the single flowered, fragrant, white-flowered C. eburneum. The offspring were variable but basically resembled the C. lowianum parent for shape, but changed the flower colour to a dirty white with the prominant red V-shaped patch and severely reduced the flower count (usually no more than about five). Several forms of this hybrid were made using different forms of each parent. Cymbidium Eburneo-lowianum 'Concolor' was an albino form that had C. lowianum 'Concolor' as one of its parents. C. Eburneo-lowianum 'Concolor' when crossed with C. insigne 'Sanderi' produced C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' the most famous parent of all time and the feature of a previous post.

Cymbidium Eburneo-lowianum 'Hong Kong'

In more recent times additional species have been brought into breeding programs to create new and unusual hybrids. A top hybrid registered in 1985 is Memoria Geoff Laird. Geoff was a renown orchid grower in New Zealand. Cymbidium madidum is an Australian native species that forms huge plants but has small flowers. Thankfully, it produces long spikes that have many flowers! When C. madidum is crossed with C. lowianum the result is a truly huge plant with modest sized flowers produced on pendulous spikes well over a metre in length. Talk about a gigantic hanging basket plant!!! The good aspect of this hybrid is that if flowers for me from November right through until January. Thank goodness I have plenty of room to house it as it is definitely not a plant for growers with small greenhouses or little space.

Cymbidium Memoria Geoff Laird 'Madalaine'

Another pendulous hybrid results when you cross C. lowianum with C. devonianum. The plant resembles the C. devoniaum parent which has short, wide leaves and strongly pendulous flower spikes. The colour of C. lowianum clearly shines through and increases the size of the flowers. Below is a form of C. Langleyense made using the normally coloured form of C. devonianum and C. lowianum 'Concolor'. The plant pictured is a form converted to a tetraploid. This is a magnificent plant that gets multiple spikes per bulb and flower spikes half a metre long with upwards of 35 flowers.

Cymbidium Langleyense 'Cascades' 4N

In 1902 a hybrid was created using C. lowianum and the near-monopodial, few-flowered white species C. mastersii. Cymbidium mastersii is a special species in that instead of producing normal pseudobulbs like other Cymbidiums continues to grow from one stem for several years, flowering progressively up the stem. The flowers don't open widely, are a bit small but this apparent shortcoming is more than made up for by the species elegant growth and superb fragrance. In the 1980 more interesting forms of C. mastersii became available, some being treated to increase their ploidy level. These select forms were crossed with select forms of C. lowianum to produce very beautiful offspring. Below is one of these modern crossings. The parents of this one are C. lowianum 'Concolor' and C. mastersii 'Geyserland'. The seedling were converted to tetraploids. The colour of these plants is very hard to capture as it is an ice green/white and the lip has an almost magenta-red patch on the lip. When it flowers next year I will get a much better picture. I am still learning the finer points of photography. Some colours still give me curry. So does focus.

Cymbidium Lowio-mastersii 4N

Cymbidium Lowio-grandiflorum, like C. lowio-mastersii, was registered in 1902. In many respects this is the type of hybrid that you would expect to see in the wild. Both C. lowianum and C. grandiflorum (hookerianum) grow near to each other but are normally prevented from cross-pollinating as their flowering time does not overlap. Both species are green with red on the lip. C. grandiflorum has spots on the front part of the lip and stripes of the sidelobes. C. lowianum only has the V-shaped red bar on the edge of the midlobe of the lip. Crossing the two combines all the best features of both parents but also removes a couple of others. C. grandiflorum is highly fragrant, C. lowianum and C. Lowio-grandiflorum completely scentless. The stems of C. lowianum are strong and arching, C. grandiflorum thin and pendulous. The hybrid is somewhat in between, not strong enough to be arching but too strong to be pendulous. Cymbidium lowio-grandiflorum is however remarkably strongly and clearly coloured. Unfortunately, it is most commonly identified as C. lowianum, its unique qualities and identity being subsumed into its more common parent.

Cymbidium Lowio-grandiflorum 'Clearview'

Below are two hybrids that show very strong C. lowianum influence. The upper photo is a hybrid between C. Pauwelsii and C. eburneum and is called C. Sybil. This plant came to me from a deceased estate in Sydney and still had the brass, embossed label on it when I inherited it in 1983. Cymbidium Sybil was registered in 1916, the year my father was born. Interestingly enough, while the colour of the C. Pauwelsii parent is washed out, the strong fragrance of the C. eburneum parent is only slightly diminished. This is one of my favourite plants. It is hard to portray exactly how beautiful this plant is. I know that most people go for the beauty of the individual flower but in some cases the production and configuration of the whole plant, leaves, flower spikes and individual flowers come together to make one magnificent whole. The flower spikes produce only 5 or so flowers and they barely make it beyond the leaves. However, each bulb produces, on average two spikes per year and will flower for 2-3 years from the same bulb. The leaves are thin and arching. The pseudobulbs are long and narrow and tightly clustered. I have never divided the plant in all of the time that I have had it, only removing dead pseudobulbs and refreshing the potting mix. It grows happily in a 12 inch pot. This year it has 17 flower spikes, it would have had 18 but I broke one off after it came out and gave it to a friend.

Cymbidium Sybil 'Perky'

This last plant is the problem child of my collection. I bought it many many years ago as a seedling. I actually have several from the same batch that look similar. It was sold to me as C. lowianum from a reliable grower who had inported a flask from an even more reliable grower in California. It look for all the world like a C. lowianum and the plants and flowering time are identical. The other alternative is that it may be the hybrid between Golden Cascade and C. lowianum 'Concolor' . Cymbidium Golden Cascade is half C. lowianum 'Concolor' so this would make the hybrid pictured below 3/4 C. lowianum 'Concolor'. It is one of those plants that i will never really know for sure what it is, but hey, some plants are just so stunning that you keep them anyway. This one is a keeper.

Cymbidium Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'

2008-10-25T22:23:00.001-07:00

Some plants are just steeped in mystery and romance. There is the legendary Rafflesia arnoldii that purportedly has the largest flower in the world. This giant flower, up to 1 m across and weighing in at 10 k grows in the deepest darkest rainforests of Malaysia, Sumatra and Indonesia. Rafflesia adds to its mystery as it is parasitic, living its life inside the stems of the grape relative Tetrastigma. The flowers burst through the sides of the plant stems in the same manner as the alien emerged from the humans in the movie Alien. As if this plant did not have enough weirdness about it the flowers just had to smell of rotting meat and be pollinated by blowflies.

The orchid world is resplendent with stories of fantastic plants that have been found once in some far-flung jungle and never to be seen again. Paphiopedilum sanderianum was found in 1885 in Borneo but the specific location was never recorded. This bizarre flower has twisted hairy petals that grow up to a metre in length. Imagine a flower stem with 6 flowers with long, flowing hairy tresses. The plant equivalent of Medusa! Some plant freaks go so far as to suggest that these long hairy petals are ladders, up which the insect pollinators climb. It was not until 1978 that it was rediscovered. The only proof that this plant existed was a beautiful drawing. Some botanists went so far as to think and, God-forbid, say that it may have been a hoax. The plant still grows in a highly protected national park in Borneo. Oh, you can also buy a 2.25 inch pot for $125.oo.

The genus Cymbidium is not immune from both real and imagined mysterious plants. Cymbidium sanderae , or Cymbidium parishii var sanderae as it is more widely known, is a classic. It is not really clear where the plant actually comes from. The location on the original label does not exist. The specimen sheet that represents the type specimen is a mixture of flowers from different plants, giving the impression of a hybrid swarm. Cymbidium sanderae was lost to cultivation and in the wild until it was discovered in a greenhouse in California. That original plant was propagated and colchicine treated to convert some of the progeny into tetraploids. The diploid and tetraploid forms are now grown widely throughout the world but have still not been relocated in the wild. The plant freaks starting to question the validity of C. sanderae as a species as they are wont to do with long 'extinct' plants.

Anyone that has had even a passing fancy for Cymbidium hybrids and their parents would know that C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' is by far the most famous stud plant, having sired or carried literally hundreds of progeny. Most of the large-flowered Cymbidium hybrids and an increasing number of the more modest-sized hybrids can trace back to C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'. I won't go into the history of this plant as this plant is probably the most written about Cymbidium. Suffice to say it has it all, beauty, fertility, fame, fortune, it was breed on the estate of a famous aristocrat and awarded a First Class Certificate by none other than the Royal Horticultural Society. No story is complete without a bit of skullduggery and a few questions about breeding!

So lets get to the parents of C. Alexanderi. The listed parents are C. eburneo-lowianum x insigne but things are never as straightforward as what they seem. Getting more specific we find out that the parents are C. eburneo-lowianum 'concolor' x insigne 'Sanderi'. Now you ask, 'Why does the insertion of 'concolor' make a difference?". Well, you see, C. eburneo-lowianum 'concolor' is a hybrid between the species C. eburneum and C. lowianum 'concolor'. 'So?', you ask. This is where the dodgy breeding comes in. Cymbidium lowianum 'concolor' is a freak wildling that has a problem. It has faulty chromosomes that don't go through meiosis properly. What this means is that some of the progeny may have twice as many chromosomes. This is what has happened with C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'. While most of the C. Alexanderi grex where diploids, several turned out to be tetraploids. Tetraploids tend to be larger overall compared with their diploid siblings. C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' created an absolute sensation when exhibited at the Royal Horticulture Societies orchid committee and was immediately awarded.

But lets back up a bit here. The grex C. Alexanderi was made many times using slightly different parents. Siblings were also crossed with each other. All this breeding resulted in a wide range of colours from pure white albinos through yellows, pinks and murky reddish browns all using the same 'species' in the same proportions. Several of these alternative C. Alexanderi were also awarded. All went quiet on creating C. Alexanderi until recently when Andy Easton tried to repeat the cross using improved parents. His results are spectacular but nothing has resulted that approaches C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'.

Why would anyone want to re-create C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'? Put quite simply, the original plants were held quite tightly by the original owner in England. Unfortunately, most of these original plants became infected with virus and had to be destroyed. Now I am not one to look for the benefits of war, but the Second World War may have saved the life of C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'. With the likelihood of the destruction of London and the rationing of all things during the war, some of the large estates sent their prized plants to friends in far-flung regions of the British Empire. C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' was one of these plants. Thankfully, some of these pre-war plants were virus free.

A few of these plants went to a grower in Canada. From there, divisions were sent to Australia and found their way into the collection of a very wealthy and very private gentleman. His gardeners were very meticulous and kept this mans collection of awarded plants in very good condition. Near the end of this man's life, he passed on divisions of his prized plants on to another wealthy and, interestingly enough, very private man. Neither of these men had the slightest interested in the commercial orchid trade having made their fortunes through business for the former and by being a surgeon for the later. The surgeon, a good friend of mine, called me up last year and asked me to come over. Normally, it is me that rings him! This got my mind thinking he had gotten a new lot of plants that he wanted me to see. The truth was much more exciting.

When I arrived at my surgeon friends house we had the obligatory cup of tea, chocolate biscuits and chat. He then started to talk to me about his health. He is well past his seventieth birthday. He mentioned that his heart had been playing up and that the doctors had to 'zap' him a few times to get the beat regular again. This had encouraged him to think of his future, his much younger wife's future and what was going to happen to his plants. He was kind enough to say that he had written me into his will. I was to have first dibs on his collection of species. This was a very nice gesture and I must admit, slightly overwhelming to be told this before someone's death. I felt honoured that he would trust me to carry on his legacy. I had seen his plants many times and his collection of species contains almost all awarded clones. The greenhouse is meticulously clean and the plants are well grown and virus-free. Any new plants are quarantined and tested before they are allowed into the main greenhouses.

What happened next shook me. Did I mention this surgeon is a very private person? He keeps a lot of secrets and the one he was about to reveal was a stunner. He took me to a greenhouse way down the back of the property that I had never been to. Actually, I did not even know it was there. He unlocked and opened the door. What was inside was amazing. There were three long benches running the length of the greenhouse, the one in the middle double-wide. It contained only Cymbidiums, all grown to specimen size except for a small group of a few dozen smaller pots on one of the side benches. It was like going back in time. The plants were all grown in terracotta pots and meticulously groomed. The floor was covered in clean algae-free concrete creating an almost surgical cleanliness. As we walked down the edge of one of the benches, I asked him what these Cymbidiums were. FCC's he said. Yep, he had made a collection of only FCC Cymbidiums. and had been doing so since he was a young man.

One particular plant caught my eye, a plant I had only seen in pictures. Yes, it was C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' . I asked him where he had gotten it. He told me the out of England to Canada to Tasmania story. He had inherited his older plants from the Tasmanian man in the 1960's. Then he mentioned that Dr. Don Wimber had seen the plants in the 1960's or 70's and had confirmed its identity. This shocked me as I didn't think he was social enough to have known many people in the orchid world. This helped me to believe him that this C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' was the real deal.

More recently, my friend has had another turn. Unsurprisingly his first priority was to ensure that his wife will be well looked after. More surprising is that he is almost equally concerned about his collection of awarded Cymbidiums. I visited him this weekend to catch up. Again he rang me not the other way around. No Tea and biscuits today. He was in the mood for a good chat. He even berated me for being fifteen minutes late. A quick pass through the species house and straight to the Cymbidium house. Door unlocks and in we go. This time bypassing the specimen plants and right to the smaller plants. There it is, C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' in full bloom in an 8" pot. He reaches down, picks it up and hands it to me. He repeated this with half a dozen other famous plants. I still have not come down from the excitement. I ask him if he was trying to give me a heart attack.

Now I have a dilemma. I have to build a greenhouse like his. I would like something with a concrete floor, brick base and aluminium and glass top. Oh, and a lockable door. My finances are nothing like my friend's. For the moment, my new plants are locked in my potting shed.

When I got home I had to quickly get a photo of C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt'; partly to prove it was real and partly to capture it for posterity. I had never seen a real plant and I could touch and look at this one to my hearts content. Most, if not all of the pictures I had seen, looked nothing like the original painting done on the day it was awarded at Greycoat St. London, SW1.

The first photo below is reproduced courtesy of the Royal Horticultural Society, London (Orchid Committee) . It shows a painting of a single flower of C. Alexanderi 'Westonbirt' on the day it was awarded, 14th march 1922. The other three are photos of plant in my potting shed. Have a look at the upper flower in the photo with two flowers. Remarkably similar to the drawing from the RHS. Even the petals are folding in just the same way. I wonder how long it will take me to settle down?