Good old Nelly Moser

[Dorsetman]

Burrageara Nelly Moser. Widely available, from time-to-time in supermarkets, garden centres etc. I must have bought a dozen of them over the last 30 or 40 years. Very easy for the big industrial mass production units to grow, not so easy for the hobbyist ; I doubt if it would do much on a window-sill, and even for those of us with proper greenhouses, it is not easy. It is in the Oncidiniae, probably is an Oncidium nowadays; shops call it a "cambria" which is a nonsense - no such genera or grouping - that comes from the Dutch orchid traders who are superb growers, but generally not interested in taxonomy ; as an aside, the first orchid which they mass produced by tissue meristemming - at one time producing 3 million plants per year, was ( what proper orchid growers, and those interested in taxonomy ) called Vuylstekeara Cambria , var.Plush. I know all this because for one thing, the guy who ran the nursery at Plush ( in my home county) was a friend - now deceased - Keith Andrew. The Dutch latched onto the Cambria bit, and call all oncidium group inter-generic hybrids Cambria. Which tends to make me foam at the mouth......
Whatever. What it needs is very equable temperatures, not too hot, not too cold, not much difference ; always moist, never wet, never dry, good light, and again never too much etc... Easy in one of those giant greenhouses under computer control, not easy in a hobbyist set-up.
But I have just started on the mamoth task of bringing my greenhouse and its orchids back from near ruin ( i hardly went in there for 4 or 5 months whilst my wife was dying, and afterwards...)and started by cleaning 7 or 8 years of dirt off the glass, inside and out - using a 120 bar water jet, and the light is so good now that I feel I need to wear sunglassses in there. Not a lot in flower, unsurprisingly, although orchids are tough old birds, and I am surprised by how many plants I did find for my first Spring Show on Saturday . This one won't be in of course, I only bought it last week. The others, I will leave to photograph unoil after the show.

[Sheryl]

I'd love to find this in my grocery store. I'd grab it right up! Very pretty colors! Hope you're doing ok Geoff

[raybark]

Now considered to be an oncidiopsis, that's Nelly Isler, not Nelly Moser.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Beautiful. We have our labled as Nelly Isler also. Once you get the glass cleaned in your greenhouse, you will likely see so many more blooms and lighter foilage. We recently moved and I built a new greenhouse. This one is just a football field length from the old one, but is so much brighter as the lexan is all new and super clean. The orchids all got much lighter in leaf color this past summer. I finally had to add in some shade towards the middle-to-end of the summer season to keep things from burning, but the plants look much healthier. Now, I need to get back to spraying on a regular basis and balance out my fertilizer system again... lol. Work never ends in there, but I love it.

cheers,
BD

[Dorsetman]

You are both right. Goodness knows where Moser came from. Mental aberration...old man losing his marbles...
The cross was registered in the last century by a Herr Isler ( a Swiss gent) who has registered a lot of crosses especially in the Oncidium group.

[raybark]

No problem, Geoff. At my age, remembering anything is a major “plus”!

[Chris1140]

Nelly Moser is a cultivar of Clematis— a very popular and well-known one.

[Dorsetman]

Nelly Moser is a cultivar of Clematis— a very popular and well-known one.

Thanks for that , Chris. One of my favourite garden genera - I am sure that I had That one in my last garden. Not in the present one ( I downsized when I moved here , 16 years ago (!) due to old age, back then. I only have 3 or 4 now, including C. armandii which is currently in full bloom along a trellis which hides the greenhouse when viewed from my living room, and a couple of the small winter flowering C. balearica varieties, which are lovely, but you need to get up close in order to appreciate.