Oncostele Catatante

Oncostele Catatante 'Pacific Sunspots'

This fiery oncidium intergenic is named Oncostele Catatante 'Pacific Sunspots.'  The hybrid is an old favorite at the New York Orchid Show--I photographed two different clones of this cross, Catatante 'Kilauea Karma' and Catatante 'Alice' in 2013. The flowers from this orchid are bountiful and bright, demanding attention.

Oncostele Catatante 'Kilauea Karma' (Photographed in 2013)

Oncostele Catatante 'Alice' (Photographed in 2013

Oncostele Catatante is a 2002 cross between Oncostele Wildcat and Oncidium Sphacetante. Both of the parent orchids were familiar to me. I wrote a post on the complicated lineage of Oncostele Wildcat earlier this year.  Meanwhile, Oncidium Sphacetante is an older hybrid that made up a significant contribution in the lineage of Oncidium Volcano Midnight.  I would say that all of these oncidium hybrids share many similarities.

Parentage of Oncostele Catatante (Oncidium Sphacetante X Oncostele Wildcat)

Photo credit: 

Oncidium Sphacetante, by Camp Lot A Noise Tropicals (orchid vendor)

Oncostele Wildcat, Maria's Orchids: The Many Faces of Oncostele Wildcat

As I wrote in the post about it, Oncostele Wildcat comes in many different colors, depending on the clone.  This makes it hard to guess which one was used in making Oncostele Catatante.  Further, the differences between Catatante 'Alice' and the other two Catatante clones suggest that different Wildcat strains were used in the makings of each.

Here is the full lineage of Oncostele Catatante:

Lineage of Oncostele Catatante

I re-drew my lineage of Oncostele Wildcat to try and get the relationships between the parent plants to be more legible.  However, there is probably no amount of rearranging that can fully untangle this mess.  It seems that when people first figured out how to cross Oncidium orchids in the end of the 19th century, hobbyists were just breeding the crosses every which way, resulting in these incestuous loops.  A great deal of hybrids from the 1940s and earlier actually descend from a relatively small pool of parent species.

The lineage contains a total of 10 Oncidium species, and 1 Rhynchostele species. Here they are in full:

Species progenitors of Oncostele Catatante

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)