This weeks Orchid of the week is… Cym. Wallacia
Parentage: This is a cross between Cym. Warona × Cym. Alnwick Castle
Registered: 1974
The reason why it’s our Orchid of the Week:
This week’s Orchid of the Week has been a very popular plant over the years, and shows some lovely colour with a very bright orange with yellow, but it has it’s detractors too! There are a few different cultivar’s out there with the most well known ‘Burnt Gold’ and Burn’t Orange’, which are pretty much the same really……
It has a nice bold red lip and still looks stunning when grown well, and is still a part of many backyard collections.
Myself, I’m a little on the fence with this one…….it looks great, but I did find it a little hard and slow to grow well and susceptible to virus, and have long since thrown my 2 examples out.
There are currently over 40 registered offspring from Wallacia, however a lot of breeders find good progeny have been a bit hard to come by. Not a lot of the crossings have been successful, however, it has produced some interesting flowers along the way. A few to have a look at are Cym Amber Sands, Cym. Cinnamon Wall, Cym. Lunar Wall and maybe the best, Cym. Hazel Dawn.
I’d also be interested to see photos of Cym. Ojay’s Hotspot which is a cross with Cym erythraeum, registered by Royale Orchids in 2015. Be interesting to see what that looks like!
This image of Wallacia was taken from the OrchidRoots website. Wallacia is still out there and available if you look around!
Looking back at the original species ancestors of this plant, using Orchid Roots Cym. insigne and Cym. lowianum are the major contributors present in the distant background.