This week’s Orchid Wise Orchid of the Week is… Cym. Western Bunny
Parentage: This week’s Orchid of the Week is a cross between Cym. Eastern Bunny x Cym. Portuguese Passion
Registered: 2025
The reason why it’s our Orchid of the Week:
For this weeks Orchid of the Week, Joe Santy from the U.S. has registered a lovely new hybrid. Joe is a well-established and highly active breeder who specialises in show bench plants, as well as peloric and splash petal/feathered varieties. You can explore his work at www.santyorchids.com, and Joe himself kindly supplied the photo above.
I have been following Cym. Western Bunny ever since I heard about the cross early last year. Consequently, I have been eagerly anticipating the resultant flower colours — which have, pleasingly, turned out to be wonderfully varied.
An interesting breeding composition!
To understand the parentage, it helps to look at each parent in turn. On one side, Cym. Eastern Bunny is a cute little yellow cross that uses Cym. goeringii to reduce both plant and flower size. Cym. goeringii is a very interesting, and sometimes polarising plant with the modern tetraploid fans! Not everyone likes it! Cym. goeringii also adds a touch of fragrance to the line. On the other side, Cym. Portuguese Passion is an old favourite of mine — and because it carries the pure colour factor, it fits perfectly within my collection preferences. I already grow this plant in my collection, and I particularly love how its crisp white offsets all of the other colours around it.
Together, these two parents produce a lovely miniature to intermediate-sized flower on upright spikes. And so far results have ranged from yellows, whites and light greens, to various shades of all of these colours across different flowerings. Perhaps most usefully, this hybrid flowers in Autumn through to Winter, making it a valuable addition to the earlier-season plants in any collection. As a result, collectors can realistically aim to keep a Cymbidium in flower for most of the year.
Tracing the plant’s heritage, as registered, using OrchidRoots, its primary species ancestors are Cym. insigne, Cym. goeringii and Cym. lowianum.