


PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY FENNELL.ORCHID CO. © ROUTE 1, BOX-230, HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA 
Orchid Importers, Growers and eogiaiss for -over 40 years——————— 



September (fall) 1948 PO 
mel 

HERE’S quite a ro- 
mance around our 
hybrid Blc Dorothy Fen- 
nell. Here is its history. 
Sometime in 1929 Do- 
rothy and I decided that 
we should learn to grow 
orchids from seed by the 
Knudson method. Dad 
had been growing his 
own hybrids since 1912 
on turkish towelling but 
we felt that method was 
too risky and unscien- 
tific and, urged on by 
him, we got together a 
very interesting collec- 
tion of nearly every- 
thing that had been pub- 
lished, up to that time, 
on the germination of 
orchid seed. It wasn’t 
so easy to get the in- 
formation then as now 
for you couldn’t find 
the entire process of seed 
planting nor the formu- 
la for the medium in 
any one publication. It 
was necessary to get 
some information from 
one article, additional 
points from another source, etc. 
Letters to Dr. Knudson brought 
forth a reply that we should come to 
Cornell for two or three months and 
he would teach us as special students, 
but we didn’t have the money nor 
the time required. 
Another public institution that was 
raising seedlings at that time, when 
asked for information, replied that 
the method used was “secret” and 
could not be divulged. 
But we persevered and finally had 
enough information to start. We 
knew a little of the various bacterio- 
logical techniques from college cours- 
es, we had taken a few years pre- 
viously so we bought the necessary 
materials and jumped in. 
We used the kitchen as our lab, 
after its*daily use was over and the 
children were tucked in for the 
night. We had many troubles and not 
until our sixteenth try were we able 


Left.BLC Dorothy Fennell var Perfection and Right BLC Dorothy 
Fennell 46608, one of the finer dark varieties of this bybrid. 
of both available). 
Bic. DOROTHY FENNELL 
OUR BEST HYBRID 
to get a really good set of flasks with 
no mold and with heavy germination. 
We had ten 500cc flasks in this lot. 
They were planted on November 1, 
1930 and transplanted to com- 
munities during the next summer. 
The seed was produced by Dad’s C, 
trianaei var. Naranja and the pollen 
parent was Blc. Alfred Mollet var. 
Vivid which Dad had imported from 
Black and Flory in 1928. 
Thus the cross we later registered 
as Ble Dorothy Fennell was the first 
hybrid raised by the Fennell family 
by modern methods. 
We grew about 1,000 plants from 
the ten flasks and we have bloomed 
between 400 and 500 ourselves. <A 
few of the plants were weak and 
slow-growing but for the greater 
part they were strong growing and 
large flowered. We have never seen 
a really poor flower among them and 
fully 50% of them are of top show 
quality. 
At the time we took 
the plants from the 
flasks (we potted one 
flask at a time about 
every two weeks) we 
separated them as to 
size, putting each size 
into separate communi- 
ties and marking them. 
The largest plants taken 
from the bottles were 
the first to bloom. You 
can imagine with whar 
excitement we waited 
for the first bud to open 
—it was Nov 1, 1937. 
Then we were almost 
afraid to look at it, for 
hybrids are not always 
improvements on their 
parents unless great 
care has been taken to 
(Seed choose those parents 
wisely, looking back 
into the family tree on 
both sides. But we 
were not disappointed 
and we have since learn- 
ed how lucky we were 
to succeed so well in this 
early effort. 
The second largest group bloomed 
the next year and so on until the 
smallest plants finally bloomed when 
fifteen years old. We have since re- 
peated this experiment on other hy- 
brids and are convinced that only 
the larger plants, when there is con- 
siderable variation between indivi- 
duals in the flasks, should be grown. 
The rest should be thrown out when 
deflasked. (These plants were about 
two years slower than we would now 
grow them. They were moved from 
Florida to Maryland and grown one 
winter on an inadequate sun porch, 
they were not fed, etc. etc. On the 
other hand _ Brasso-laelia-cattleyas 
are usually giants and require one to 
two more years to bloom than do 
Cattleyas.) 
On the whole we have never seen a 
lot of seedlings in which the average 
of flower quality was so high or the 
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