Photography credit: Andy Easton
We made the crossing of Vuyls. Cambria ‘Plush’ (2n) × Oda. Charlesworthii 4n some years ago now. So long ago that already the clones of our selection, a really bright, true red, have already been cloned and are on the market. I remember sending all the smaller seedlings down to Colomborquideas in 2017 and just last week, I saw an unusually colored spike on a mixed group of seedlings. I looked at the label and there, in a 4” pot, was an orange-tan budded plant with the Cambria × Charlesworthii label on it.
My initial feeling was that a tag had got mixed up but when the flower opened, there was no mistaking the Odm. harryanum influence. Now nobody is going to get excited about any seedling that takes maybe eight years to make its first bloom and in just a 4” pot too, but this tail-ender does show that these wild cards do occasionally show up in almost every crossing. For some mysterious reason, in this seedling, the 33% weighted genetic influence of Odm. harryanum was able to outweigh the red color contributions of Cambria and Cda. noezliana!