Wilsonara Fortissimo
Wilsonara Fortissimo is a lovely intergeneric hybrid. Sadly, I can find very little information about it online, so I can’t say anything definite about its parentage. It has a classic ‘Chocolate Oncidium’ scent such as you might find in Sharry Baby or Katrin Zoch, but the blooms are marginally larger than in either of those hybrids. The flower spikes are quite tall, up to 2 feet, and usually have several branches.
I got my plants some time ago amongst a batch of quite poor-quality material from a German nursery (which shall remain nameless, but which I shall not be using again). The Fortissimo were among the better-quality plants, but even they were in desperate need of a repot and removal of old spikes, leaf sheaths and general detritus. I now have two plants left (out of a total of four) and both are doing very nicely. The pseudobulbs are very tall and quite fat, so they tend to need support after they have been potted on. I now have them growing in my trusty mix of bark chips and chopped sphagnum moss and the root growth has been very good, especially having being kept slightly damp. In summer, they were kept outside in my shadehouse and watered regularly by hose pipe and the leaky roof and went from strength to strength. During winter they are kept in my slightly cooler growing area and appear quite happy there. I call it my cool area but it isn’t that cool at all, actually. I assume this hybrid is very temperature tolerant and will happily grow and flower over a wide range of conditions, making it a very good hybrid to keep as a houseplant.
