Odontocidium Hansueli Isler
Odontocidium Hansueli Isler . 15 four inch flowers ( inc buds) on a 30 inch spike.
Yellow “odonts” usually fade to white, but a strong yellow like this, will keep its colour throughout the maybe 6 - 8 weeks of the flower life ; that’s in S/H. It would not do as well in a more conventional system, and the bulbs would shrivel to the point of frightening any sane grower, long before then ; Charlesworths, the long-gone UK nursery who bred so many superb Odonts used to tell me “ cut the spike after 10-14 days to save the plant”. What they would have made of S/H I can’t imagine. They were still using mid 19th century growing systems when I first met them in mid 20th century , and naturally they went out of business thereafter…
This plant was bred by that fine Swiss breeder , Jakob Isler – responsible for so many lovely hybrids in this group ; I always had the fancy that he lived on one of the islands in the Italian Lakes which has a lovely garden that I have visited several times– it is on the Swiss border , because of the Isler name. But it is merely a word meaning, or very similar to a word meaning “island” which illustrates how it was possible for me to be too clever in jumping to conclusions.
ps Its always possible to do better, with orchids... I have recenlly found some pics taken at the Eric Young Foundation - who used ( when the pics were taken 20 years ago ?) rock wool blocks kept swimmingly wet - very similar to S/H and had results to die for with odonts. When I've fathomed out how to make my new slide scanner work, I'll post some pics - in the meantime I just have it in my mind not to be satisfied until I get two spikes like this per bulb...
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