Phalaenopsis Journal First Quarter Vol. 21(3) 2012 | Page 21

Phal. Equalacea
Phal. Louise Burns
grex Sapphire’s Indigo Equalacea ‘Pacific Steel’ (Phal. Equalacea × P. violacea ‘Sapphire’s Navy’)
fortunately, the Hybridizers Forum had to be disbanded,
but I will always be extremely grateful for the support and
knowledge that was passed on during that time period. In
2010, I started the Orchid Vault community (www.orchid-
vault.com) in an effort to continue to provide a venue for
both new and experienced hybridizers to learn and share
information in the hopes that I can provide the same op-
portunity to others that was provided to me. I owe a great
deal to the individuals that freely participated, shared their
knowledge and provided mentoring as they helped shape
my thought processes and were instrumental in helping to
refine the directions of my breeding program.
The primary goal for my breeding program was always
to improve the quality of coerulea Phalaenopsis up to the
same level as most other modern standard Phalaenopsis.
I wanted to produce hybrids that could withstand the test
of time and provide a significant contribution to coerulea
Phalaenopsis breeding. When I started in 2001 most coeru-
lea phals had small flowers and were not particularly easy
to grow. So my early focus was to create hybrids with more
saturated color, a wider range of blue hues and improved
vigor on both standard and multiflora sized Phalaenopsis.
My approach to accomplish this was to organize the work
in phases and I planned out my hybridizing program in a
very methodical manner. Starting out, there were a num-
ber of unknowns, so a r easonable amount of experimenta-
tion was planned into my breeding program to begin an- swering those early questions.
Phase I would be focused on building a world class col-
lection of coerulea phals and other foundation breeding
stock that I felt would be necessary along the way. Some of
the stud plants that I believed I needed did not exist and I
would later realize that some had severe ploidy problems,
so in many cases I ended up having to create my own foun-
dation stock.
Phase II would then leverage that collection of stud plants
I would need to bring together to then create a foundation
of stud plants designed specifically to accomplish my long-
term goals. Part of this process would include colchicine
treating a wide enough range of crosses so that I would
have a solid base of tetraploid coeruleas to work with. I
knew I also needed to develop a better understanding of
how Phalaenopsis inherited the color pigments in different
crosses which would mean testing many crosses to prove
out theories while also doing a large number of experi-
mental crosses to fill in the gaps.
The best of the selections from the crosses coming out
of Phase II along with lessons learned about coerulea pig-
ment inheritance would then be used in Phase III to create
the crosses that should allow me to complete my objec-
tives. Sounds simple enough right? Little did I know just
how difficult all of this was going to become. Keep in mind;
I was in my late 20s when I came up with my high-level hy-
bridizing plan. I was old enough to realize that there were
Phalaenopsis - First Quarter, Vol. 21(3) 2012
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