Baker’s culture sheet question
 

Good morning. I was looking to gather the culture sheets on my plants, but have found that it’s difficult to locate some on the orchidculture.com website. I’m hoping that someone could answer a few questions so I can better use their service.

I’m having no luck finding ‘Beallara Marfitch Howard’s Dream’ (Bratonia Charles M Fitch x Oncidium Fermat). I understand it’s a complex hybrid so I’m sure I’m just not searching for it correctly.

Another is the Psychopsis Mendenhall 'Hildos' FCC/AOS (Butterfly × papilio). Since this is just 75% papilio and 25% sanderae do I just get the culture sheets of both?

Also I can’t find anything on my Paph. Clair de Lune 'Edgard Van Belle'. Since this hybrid is 50% lawrenceanum, 25% callosum, and 25% superbiens do I just get the culture sheets for all three?

As you can see, I think I just don’t understand exactly how I am supposed to search for hybrids. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

The culture sheets are for species only. The ones you have listed are hybrids. You can research the species in the parentage of the hybrids on orchidroots.com Then you can get the culture sheets on the species that make up the hybrid.

You can also get some basic information about the species from IOSPE (brief notes about habitat, elevation, etc) that can give you some ideas as what species might be similar to each other in habitat so that one culture sheet would give you the detailed info on onw, but could be applied to the hybrid.

Thank you for the reply, Roberta! You are always so incredibly helpful and willing to share your knowledge. It’s much appreciated.

So my next questions are related to breaking it down into the lineage. For example, Orchidroots list the Beallara Marfitch at 26.79% Onc. alexandrae, but there is no showing for this on the culture list. So I then look at the synonyms for this on orchidroots which shows Odontoglossum alexandrae and Odontoglossum crispum (amongst others) as synonyms. Both of these are on the culture list. So I take it these plants will have the same culture sheets because they are the same?

It gives even more synonyms when trying to find something like Onc. noezlianum. This is also not on the culture list, but it has so many synonyms. Is this orchid really called this many different names or I am not understanding this correctly? Seems a little overwhelming when trying to look up lineage.

Synonyms are a fact of life. DNA info has led to many genus changes ... doesn't change the culture, just makes it a bit challenging to match older references with newer names

That's why I'm very sad Orchidwiz has stopped. I have the very last version, but it's only a matter of time before it's outdated and doesn't show the most recent names.

Alas, yes, this has been my go-to resource. The Baker sheets that it contains won't go obsolete and there won't be any more of them, but the parentage of hybrids is really convenient, and the ones after the end of last year won't be there. Alas, people do retire. It is sad that Alex Maximiano was not able to get AOS or someone else to take it over.

Many genera of Oncidium relatives have been moved around a lot. This leads to the old hybrid genus names, or nothogenera, becoming obsolete, and new nothogenera are used.

But species in the old genera frequently grouped together as far as cultural conditions. For example, the former genus Odontoglossum, now lumped into Oncidium, consisted almost entirely of cool to cold growing species. When you saw a nothogenus including Odontoglossum you could be fairly sure it wanted cooler conditions than some other intergeneric Oncidium hybrids.

You will still find a lot of plants sold under the old nothogenera. I look them up on the RHS Nothogenera list, which I recommend people download and use for this purpose.

Some of the old, now obsolete nothogenera formed from former Odontoglossum species include Bakerara, Banfieldara, Beallara, Burrageara, Carpenterara, Colmanara, Dergarmorara, Howardara, Odontiopsis, Odontobrassia, Odontocidium, Odontonia, Vuylstekeara and Wilsonara.