Warm and Hot Cymbidiums - a reference

[Keysguy]

Hah......... I just woke up! All this talk of the Milton Carpenter Cymbidium........he was the gentleman that owned Everglades Orchids I mentioned earlier and whose name I couldn't recall. DUH!

Here's a snipit I found on his hybridizing success in search of "warmth tolereant" Cymbidiums.

"Over the years, we have attempted well over 15,000 hybrids. From that, we've obtained about 3,000 pods. That means that 20% of the pods did take. Of those 3,000 pods, the majority of them did not produce viable seeds. I believe we have named 504 hybrids out of those 3,000 pods. With this type of hybridizing within the Oncidiinae, you run into sterility barriers due to the different groups and genera. Sometimes they simply won't match up - and then if you do get something, it's often a mule - you can't go any further with it. So you have to make a lot of hybrids to find a few that are successful -- those that will give you a good plant and allow further hybridization."