Cym Elisabeth Bruyninckx 4n

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MrCym
Posts: 14378
Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:37 pm

Cym Elisabeth Bruyninckx 4n

Post by MrCym »

Just prepared the division to be shipped next week to her namesake! I am at the point now where I know a little about peloric Cymbidiums. Things may not be quite what you believe. I have a book, published in 1961 featuring a picture of Cymbidium Vangie 'Harlequin''. It was published by a gentleman with the quaint name of Roy Grubb. There were two volumes published and in Volume 1, there was a picture of Cymbidium Vangie 'Harlequin', the first peloric hybrid I had ever seen. I was enchanted. The hybrid was old, registered by Armstrong & Brown a good many years earlier. My interest became focused rapidly when Don Wimber shared a 4n Vangie 'Harlequin' with me when I was in Eugene, Mrs. Menninger had the plant and Don converted it for her. I was ready to breed with it and dazzle the Cymbidium world. Fortunately, I made only two pods just in case. So I selfed it and crossed it with Fanfare 4n. I was not selling flasks at that time so I just made a couple of replates from each pod. My dreams turned to severe reality as the two lines matured. Neither the selfing nor the crossing gave anything resembling peloric markings on the petals. To be blunt, both were horrible.

Then came all the haphazard cloning at dodgy Labs from 1975 onwards and all sorts of petal pelorics appeared. I am open to correction but as far as I can discern, none of the petal pelorics ever produced one peloric offspring! Ray Bilton, that supposed orchid whiz, used Mavourneen 'Jester', a peloric mutation from McBean's meristem of Cym Mavourneen with pollen from Vangie 'Harlequin' and the world is still waiting to hear about the result.... let me satisfy your curiosity, the resultant hybrid, registered as Cym Carnival produced not a single petal peloric!

Now I know that ventral sepal peloria is a different animal. After much urging I did make one sepal peloric hybrid and named it for a good friend but my position now is to avoid most pelorics. I make just the one exception for the hybrid between Devon Elf 4n and Diane de Langhe 'NH' 4n, an alba 4n heavily influenced by Cym. tracyanum. Just to connect the dots, Elisabeth is Diane de Langhe's granddaughter so let's hope Elisabeth becomes the third generation orchidist in her family!