What type of intergenerics? "Intergeneric" merely means that two or more different genera are the parents. So we may have vandas crossed with arachnis, encyclias crossed with cattleyas, miltonias crossed with brassias; all are intergenerics and all have different culture.

A rule of thumb is to look up the culture of the parents, and the hybrid will be between them in light, temperature and watering.

Thanks CJ and Richard
I am speaking in general. I like to know if I can care for a plant before I buy it. Just because I keep orchids in my office, I get a lot of questions lately from people who have bought intergens (usually HD) and have no idea how to care for them. I don't know how to direct them. Can get to be a large explaination.

Some intergenics get fairly confusing when looking at parentage, especially when it's 3 or 4 genera . Yes Richard I am after light temp and water requirements. Would one parent be soley for fragrance or do I take his culture into account as well? For example BLC or BAK or ODE. Becomes a lot to sort out

and could my BLC look very different from another's? (structually not the flowers)
Clara

Taking BLC as an example, that means that it contains a mix of Brassavola, Laelia and Cattleya. It can contain any species in any proportion. So, yes, they can be different looking plants. However, they can be generalized to need high light and like to dry out between watering.

For an office, perhaps SLC would do better as the light requirement is lower. Here is SLC Sierra Plum.
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You're right, that's too much information for newbies. Their eyes will glaze over and they'll get the idea orchids are too hard.

When I started, I didn't make such fine distinctions. I just used the AOS website culture sheets for "oncid" "catt" or "phal" and went from there for warmth and light. The line drawing helps identify the plant, despite the name. For newbies, I think that's as much inf as they can handle til they know more. Took me a year before I really understood the difference between Blc and Lc, despite a lot of reading.

You could also print off some culture sheets from vendors like Carter & Holmes, Big Leaf etc.

Looking different-- depends on what differences. If it's not a clone, it can look quite different. eg is Iwana Apple Blossom. The sibs of this cross include the bigger faster grower, white with pink flush, and a much smaller plant altogether with yellow flower. Both are bifoliates though, so once you know they're related, you can see the similarities in the way they grow as well as the differences.

Clara, this is an impossible question to answer. You could write a book.
Just one example; Blc. Golden Tang and Blc. Memoria Crispin Rosales.
Both Blc. but very different orchids as far as flower and plant shape is concerned.
Light, temp and water requirements? This is like setting up a table and expecting people to have growing conditions that can be set. I suppose that you could define light by lumens or foot candles and that would be more accurate than me saying "Cattleya" light.
I could ramble on for hours. Does anyone know what the Intergeneric count is up to now?
In the past i've made some wild guesses about how many sets of different growing conditions would be needed to grow everything. Ten, twelve???

Lets see, i have.
Outside in the yard from full sun to shade
Inside on windowsills. Normal house temps for latitude 34S and a warmer area.
Shadehouse. From strong shade to light shade
Cold glasshouse (no winter heating)
Warm glasshouse (actually not that warm) Missing out on tropical lowland conditions. Must ask the dragon if i can have another glasshouse,
Missing out on mist forest. Must ask the D......etc.etc.
and so on. Lol

Thanks all!
Richard gorgeous plant. You always have the most gorgeous orchids. Love your choices!

I am lucky. I don't work in a "regular office" as you are imagining. I have the florescents but in 4's.LOL. Home and work are the same place, large converted factory...sooo my office is a jungle. Now you can see the problem that Meheizebel brings up. People don't know that there is more than 2 or 3 types of orchids. Then to try to talk about intergens... well.. Impossible like Arthur says

It would be so nice to have a spot like Jays for intergenerics. Its very difficult to know the breeder's intent and then to translate that to culture. Was wondering if there was such a place?

Lets take BLC. I have one. A client also has one. He brought it to me because it was "sick" and won't flower. (Not enough light). I was so shocked at how structurally different it looked from mine. He is describing flowers that are also different but we shall see. Mine look more like "Brassavola". He is describing more like "Catts"

Now this is where I even get lost. Culture. I can't grown my Brassavola like a catt. or even my Digbyana for that matter. The Dig loves to fry in the sun/lights. If I did it to a a catt and I would burn it. Just as Arthur points out. They can be very different. So its hard to get a general sense of what should be.

Arthur, you would be the perfect person to write such a book!

Clara

Clara, it's not as simple as a standard culture, since even within many genera there are species who come from very different habitats -- from cold wet mountaintops to hot dry beaches. So you have to know which Oncidium species and which Miltonia species, for example, are the ones used in your particular Miltonidium intergeneric hybrid in order to get the right temperature and watering. That's why growing orchids is a lifelong learning experience, unlike sticking a rosebush in the ground.

Thanks CJ and all.

For me I am willing to do my homework. Love it. For others...well... My office is not the conventional one. I work from home so I have a grow area set up in the window. Lights and a huge sw window. Unfortunately it draws people seeking advise. Was hoping there was a site to direct them to for intergenerics. I have had people bring me their tags and their sick mush bombs... I may have to change my window grow area :-(

I have 1 last question. I had a client drop off some kind of catt hybrid. NOID. (he is a really good client so Clara's "plant hospital" took it in, what could I do?) Its a monster. The sheaths are full of fungus. I have treated it but I know that the black spots on the sheaths will not go away. Can the sheaths be peeled off? The owner finds it unsightly

The bulbs underneath are not infected or spotted. They have already produced flowers (now gone) and look like they are getting ready to make new growth. There is 1 hot dog left. Full of fungus. Looks like an over- spritzer situation.

I am NOT a Catt person at all. The poor plant has been through hell. Some of the older PB's were chopped off after they bloomed. "They looked like they were dying" Yikes!

Thanks for any advise
"Nurse Clara"

Here comes Howard the Heretic again to muddy further the murky waters of debate. First of all I don't believe that the experienced growers here (cough, CJ.. Richard... did Arthur chime in?) track down the parentage of every hybrid they acquire and split the differences in culture, etc. ... Impossible. No, what the experienced grower does is establish a baseline set of conditions in their greenhouse such that 90%, if not 95% of their plants are happy and then fine tune the care of the recalcitrant plants by moving them! After all, you cannot re-site your greenhouse because a single plant requires just a little less south-west sun than the GH gets at present. Ridiculous overstatement yes, but what I am reading says to the novice that they must get into the plant the individual plant in order to grow it. I submit that with a hybrid or intergeneric (and 'intergeneric' without any other qualifier always means an intergeneric of the Odontoglossinae/Oncidinae variety) using the culture appropriate for any one of the parents will result in culture that, if not perfect, at least will not kill the hybrid. And isn't that the first step? First, do no harm. Then you can work from there to figure out the minutiae.

Trust me, Clara, you do not want a Jay's site for hybrids or rather, such a thing is simply not necessary. All we do is ignore what we learn at such sites anyway!!! I mean, how many of us attempt to supply 4,000fc of light for Cattleya _____________ or a 115F daytime max for Grammatophyllum ____________? No, we give the orchid what we have to give and it either likes it or it doesn't. Am I wrong? Luckily such an approach can work, just because a particular species 'likes' 4000fc and a majority of specimens were observed to be experiencing just that, often it is discovered that the very same species will do well in 2500fc. If people didn't try to grow plants in 'incorrect' conditions we wouldn't know what is ultimately possible.

And no, I am not turning a corner as regards my light theories. Just observing that observing good health and growth in an orchid in ones supplied conditions usually sets the standard for care. Attempting to re-create every individual weather station report for every single plant in a collection, even a small one, in a single growing area is simply an impossible assignment.

H

Carol summed it up. A lifelong learning experience. In my case that is about 35 years of trying to grow and killing orchids.

Now why does Jay's site only give you hints? Take Dockrillia linguiformis. If you go to the site it will give you lovely climate data for hereabouts. Not the data for the specific micro climates where it is to be found.

Getting back to the Oncidiinae Intergenerics. Those 35 years of experience have taught me to avoid most of those with Odontoglossum or Miltoniopsis ancestors. That is as complicated as it gets.

The answer to your catt question - yes, the dried sheaths can be and should be, peeled off. Since they are probably very dry, wet the sheaths thoroughly and peel them one layer at a time. Be careful and look for new root growth around the pbulbs.

Brooke

Howard, you assume too much again. As a matter of fact, I do indeed check the genealogy of EVERY hybrid I buy or am interested in, all the way back to the original species it was made from and the percentages of each which comprise its make up. By having that information, I have a good idea of what conditions it would like and how big the plant is going to be. I buy all my plants online or by show preorder and therefore don't see the plant prior to owning it.

Although I pay for a program to make it faster to look up the genealogy, the information is available for free online at the RHS with a bit more work depending on how complex the hybrid is. All you have to do is backtrack each generation; like you are doing a family tree. Takes some time, but it's cheaper than losing a $25 plant.

Back when killed my first orchid in the late '50s and then got into serious orchid growing in the late 60's, there was little information out there; the early Rebecca Northen and Jack Kramer books mostly. It was at that time that having the advice of experienced growers was a true blessing and almost a necessity to get the information you needed about each plant -- hybrid or species. Nowadays, with all the info on the Internet, the old-time experienced growers are no longer necessary for successful orchid growing. But it means you are going to have to hunt for the information, and the better you get at researching the Internet, the better your plants are going to grow -- and the less mistakes you are going to make. However, even the Internet cannot always supply what you need, and therefore, if you are really serious about your hobby, you are going to have to cut loose and buy a few reference books of your own -- not picture books but books with cultural/habitat information for the types of plants you grow or want to grow.

Howard is right on the money. The key to success is selecting plants for the existing conditions, not altering conditions. I have 500 or so plants, and I have a basic "adapt or die" policy. I move the plants up and down, north and south, but there is only a range of conditions available.

Every now and then I will try a new plant type for a year or so. Last year I got a Dracula and now have 2, but I will not get any more until I see what happens. I was willing to try because I have been having success with Masdevallia. Common wisdom says that we are too warm for Dracula. I would be foolish to spend much on these plants until I see.

On the other hand, I freely add to my species Encyclia, Laelia or Cattleya. I know that my conditions are (generally) good for them.

With regard to the cattleya, what makes you think it's fungus? You speak about sheaths. The sheath is in the crook of the plant where the leaves meet the bulbs and it's from this that buds eventually come. The bulb itself is covered with what looks like onion skin and this is called a sarong. The sarong protects the bulb until it matures and then, no longer needed, it dries up. Often the sarong can look pretty scarey as it deteriorates. It can harbor insects and should be groomed from the plant.

Which looks like fungus, the sheath or the sarong?

Old or blasted sheaths often get papery looking and covered with black spots that look a lot like fungus. I suspect this is what the poster is referring to. I have never seen it spread to the rest of the p-bulb.

H

I want to thank everyone. Good information. I suppose that maybe a Jay's is not what I had in mind but rather, what is the intent in the creation of the hybrid? Is it to make it more "user friendly" for colour? How to know if the conditions are right?

Richard is your SLC fragrant? I should make a seperate post about what blooms well in conventional office situations.

I had to giggle at your post Arthur. I know what you mean about Odontoglossum and Miltoniopsis ancestors. Although funny, I can grow and ODBRS but not a BLLRA. That is exactly what I am talking about. Theoretically I should be able to do so in my conditions. My favourite question; why? Why is this the case? I can research the parentage all day long but it doesn't help me know why or in what amounts this plant has what. Maybe if I knew what the breeder had in mind it would help. Maybe if there were an online resource for this it would also be helpful. Like what artists do about their body of work.

With regards to the black spots on the sarong, thank you for the imput. This plants has a lot of problems; you would too if you sat in the dark and have been chopped off at the feet, over watered and who knows what else. I am just trying to give it light without burning it, treat the fungus, repot and hope for the best. The end of the T-8 rack is too much light at this point and it now has 2 buds, 1 covered in fungus. Thank for letting me know the black spots are unrelated to the fungus. I assume that is the natural deterioration of the sarong?

Clara

As I mentioned before, you can go to the RHS website, enter the name of the hybrid, and it will tell you who the parents are. If they are species, it ends there. If they are hybrids, you enter each of them individually and get their parents, and so on and so forth, like a family tree, until to get all the way back to the original species. Sometimes it only takes a few minutes, other times it can take a while to track back. The RHS is the organization which registers all the world's orchid hybrids and their database can be used for free.

More serious collectors spend the money to buy one of the orchid databases, either Wildcatt or Orchidwiz, which, as one of their features, you can type in the hybrid name, hit the 'genealogy' button, and have all the percentages in front of you in a second or two.

Those are the only two ways I know to get hybrid parentage.

Here is a link that might be useful: RHS