Oncostele Romance 'Oro Rojo'

Oncostel Romance 'Oro Rojo'

Oncostele Wildcat was parent to Oncostele Catatante, and Oncostele Catatante is the parent to this brightly colored orchid. Oncostele Romance is a 2010 cross between Oncostele Catatante and Oncidium Petite Shine.

There's a couple different cultivars of this hybrid out in the internet.  The 'Oro Rojo' I photographed has scarlet petals and a golden lip.  Meanwhile, Oncostele Romance 'Peachy' has the same orange tones as its parent Oncostele Catatante.

Oncostele Romance 'Oro Rojo'

I could not complete a genealogy for the orchid.  This hybrid's parentage has something like 200 parent plants, and the software I use to draw my genealogy trees cannot handle files of this size.  The complexity of the orchid's lineage comes from the utter mess of orchid breeding that went on in the first half of the 20th century. During this time, a relatively small number of primary hybrids were being bred among each other in every combination possible to produce a plethora of very closely related orchid crosses.  But if you follow the genealogy trees, all of these hybrids reach back to the same handful of parent species.

The result is: Oncidium Petite Shine has over a hundred progenitors.  However, it only adds 1 new oncidium species to the parentage of Oncostele Romance, that were not already represented in its other parent, Oncostele Catatante: Oncidium noezlianum.

Oncostele Romance progenitors

Photo credits:

Rhynchostele uroskinneri by FireOpal (Flickr gallery)

Oncidium fuscatum by Eduardo A. Pacheco (Flickr gallery)

Oncidium leucochilum by Arne and Bent Larsen Orchid collection

Oncidium alexandre  and Oncidium spectatissimum by Orchi

Oncidium nobile by Quimbaya (Flickr gallery)

Oncidium luteopurpureum by Dick Culbert (Flickr gallery)

Oncidium hallii by Andreas Kay (Flickr gallery)

Oncidium harryanum by Diego Rodriguez (Flickr gallery)
Oncidium sphacelatum, by AntanO (Wikimedia commons)
Oncidium Cariniferum photo (C) Eric Hunt (see his orchid photo website, also, Flickr gallery)
Oncidium nezlianum, by orchid-a-day.tumblr.com/

These are the 12 species that went into making Oncostele Romance:

Oncidium noezlianum, Oncidium nobile, Oncidium alexandre, Oncidium spectatissimum, Oncidium luteopurpureum, Oncidium halii, Oncidium harryanum, Oncidium leucochilum, Oncidium fuscatum, Oncidium cariniferum, Oncidium sphacelatum, Rhynchostele uroskinneri