Orchid Plant Museum

Cymbidium Orchids

The genus Cymbidium is a hardy one reaching an ever greater and well-deserved popularity. Plants are sympodial, terrestrial, semiterrestrial, and epiphytic. They are grown outdoors under lath in the tropics and thrive particularly on the West Coast of North America, where Southern California hopes to become the Cymbidium center of the world.

The plants have great solid pseudobulbs and very long grass-like leaves. From the depths of this graceful foliage (waist high), the flowers climb along tall, sturdy stems, usually erect, but drooping in some species. This handsome spray orchid has lent itself so well to hybridizing that it has attained a perfection in flower, of size and shape that rivals the Cattleya, and in range of color it is surpassed by no other orchid.

The aim of modern hybridizers has been to produce a flower with a dorsal sepal and petals so round that the hand cannot be seen if held behind the flower— a far cry from the slim-petaled grandparents.
Species of Cymbidium have proved strangely difficult to grow under artificial conditions, probably owing to the difficulty of giving them proper aeration. For that reason as well as for their superior beauty and size, the hybrids are far better known than the species. They must be grown in a cool house or outdoors.

Although there are sixty known species, only about ten of them have been used to any extent in making the many lovely hybrids.