Dendrobium Touch of Gold 'Laura' HCC/AOC-OSNSW

Dendrobium. Touch of Gold ‘Laura’ HCC/AOC-OSNSW – G. Hermon Slade Trophy Winner for 2014

Brian Newman of Woolgoolga gave us two pieces of this plant. We were told to look after this one, as one day it will be a champion. In 2012 it won champion Australasian orchid at the spring show and Mike Fish told us to wait a few years and get a few more spikes on the plant and put it up for an award. Well two years past and the length of the inflorescences almost doubled and required a small amount of staking so an ANOS award was out of the question so we took it to AOC and it received a high HCC. This plant is a primary antelope hybrid between D. johannis and D. gouldii and luckily it can flower two or three times a year. We keep this plant in our hot house, which sits at any temperature between 18 and 36 degrees. We water constantly all year round due to this range of temperature. We keep this plant fairy pot bound in taller pots, as they love to throw long roots as both parents reside in long and tight hollow tree branches. We use Kiwi Orchid Bark – size number 3 and feed a balanced fertiliser all year round. As for the future of this plant we have started to implement it in our breeding program with fellow antelope Dendrobiums such as D. tangerinum.