This week’s Orchid of the Week is… Cym. Flaming Comet ‘Cosmic Star’
Parentage: This week’s Orchid of the Week is a cross between Cym. Spicy Khan x Cym. Flaming Vulcan
Registered: 2013
The reason why it’s our Orchid of the Week:
Something a little different and certainly eye catching for this Orchid of the Week….
This is the very first time a feathered flower has featured on the Orchid of the Week. Usually feathered flowers are a result of a mutation during the cloning process, however, sometimes, as with this one, the feathering was found on a seedling. Much less common, but just as awesome!
Cym. Flaming Vulcan was a pretty good parent, with some plants showing very good quality blooms. Cym. Spicy Khan was also a popular plant, but I was never inspired to obtain the Cym. Flaming Comet cross. Mostly due to my obsession with species plants, and a lack of space for modern hybrids.
In the background of Cym. Flaming Comet are a number of very popular and successful plants like Cym. Khan Flame, which enjoyed a very long run as a hobbyist ‘should have’ plant.
The ‘Cosmic Star’ mutation though is absolutely worth obtaining, but good luck…….very few feathered plants will clone true, so the only way to obtain one is to get hold of a piece of the original plant. Feathered plants are very tightly held and very rarely come up for sale, and will cost you an arm and a leg!
This image taken from the 3 Amigos Facebook post from 2024. The 3 Amigos grew the plant from a seedling and were pretty happy, as you’d expect, with the result!
Tracing this plant’s original species ancestors using Orchid Roots, Cym. insigne, Cym. lowianum, Cym. hookerianum are the major species contributors of this plant!