Friday, January 8, 2010

Cym. Lovely Nymph, first bloom-finally....

Below are pictures of Cym. Lovely Nymph (Herbert George Alexander 'MOL', 4N x Wood Nymph 'Ruby Lips', 4N).


























I originally purchased seedlings of this cross in 2005 from George Hatfield, and it has finally(!) decided to bloom. Seedlings of different crosses purchased from George at that time bloomed for me two years ago (previously discussed on this blog) so this plant was on the short list of being discarded at the end of Spring. It is a vigorous vegetative grower--greater than any other Cym I have, and sending out several pseudobulbs each year--but this likely has contributed to the delayed flowering.

While I like the overall shape and form of the flower, and it does produce a modicum of fragrance, the asymmetric coloration patterns on the tepals are its downfall. It may also be that because the flower buds developed under moving, artificial lights, they aren't as well colored as they would be if blooming under natural light. I expect (hope) that better examples of Lovely Nymph exist out there in the Cymbidium world, but I haven't seen any.

While it's a fun gedankenexperiment to think of how one might improve one or more attributes of Lovely Nymph, this is one the larger sizes of an intermediate-sized Cymbidum (I could envision someone growing a nice cultivar to Cym. lowianum or Cym. tracyanum specimen size.), and I don't have the orchid growing space to pursue such ideas.

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