This week’s Orchid Wise Orchid of the Week is… Cym. Annie Kelly ‘Select’
Parentage: This week’s Orchid of the Week is a cross between Cym. Golden Elf x Cym. Tracey Reddaway
Registered: 2004
The reason why it’s our Orchid of the Week:
A very appealing early season yellow bloom from New Horizon Orchids takes the Cym of the week spot this week. Once again, it’s a plant I previously owned, and I obtained it from Guest Orchids here in Adelaide many years ago. However, this bloom was an early one, usually flowering for me in mid Autumn (April in Australia). As a result, it was a very welcome flower at a time when I had nothing else even in bud for the season.
Cym. Tracey Reddaway, the pollen parent, has been a very successful plant in its own right over the years. It was a large standard plant though and required a bit of room to grow! It did, however, have lovely big yellow blooms with red lips and no wonder it was used as a parent!
Meanwhile, the pod parent, Cym. Golden Elf, influences a lot of our early flowering plants, and breeders are still using it to bring the blooming season forward at a time of year when we’re still a little thin on flowers. Cym Golden Elf also had another influence on Cym. Annie Kelly, in bringing the plant size down to something more manageable! It is a smaller plant than a normal standard, more like a large intermediate, so would fit well for those in a smaller space.
This hybrid never really took off in Australia, I don’t think, and I’ve rarely seen it since its release. I assume Guest Orchids didn’t import many flasks of the cross, so, if anyone out there has Cym. Annie Kelly, I’d love to speak with you about obtaining a piece. My wife loves yellow blooms, plus I’d be interested to see if it has some use for breeding some new early blooms.
Finally, tracing the heritage of our Orchid of the Week through Orchid Roots reveals its primary species ancestors are Cym. insigne, Cym. ensifolium and Cym. lowianum.