Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’

One of the amusing things about Oncidium intergeneric orchids is that some come with unusual foliage colours, which throws people who expect just green foliage on their orchids.  You can get every shade of green from lime through to the really dark greens, then you get mottled foliage, red foliage, yellow foliage (not a nutrient deficiency), variegated foliage and even purple.  One of the red foliaged orchids is Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’, but that all depends on how you grow it.  As you can see from the photos I have three plants of Sweet Ears all with varying amounts of red in their foliage.  In the little 80mm pots I have one that has been grown under 50% shade cloth that really brings out that red foliage, where as the other 80mm pot has been grown under a 50% shade factor poly covering which cuts out the majority of the UV spectrum light and results in a green foliaged orchid.  The mounted specimen is in the middle for foliage colour, as it grows on a treefern mount where it gets sun through a 50% shade cloth during the morning but the poly covering from midday onwards.  Where does this foliage colour come from, well the pollen parent Oncidium Cloud Ears (see photo) that gets red foliage colouration even under poly coverings.

Sweet Ears is your typical varicosum group Oncidium, much the same as Oncidium Alosuka ‘Claire’, and is what most people imagine when they think of Dancing Lady orchids.  It prefers that nice open free draining potting mix and will make a great mounted specimen on treefern slabs if watered regularly during the warmer months.  As you can see from the treefern grown specimen it does get nice well branched flower spikes that are self supporting.

Oncidium Sweet Ears 'Pacific Gold' 80mm

Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’ 80mm

Oncidium Sweet Ears 'Pacific Gold' 80mm

Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’ 80mm

Oncidium Sweet Ears 'Pacific Gold'

Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’

Oncidium Cloud Ears

Oncidium Cloud Ears

Oncidium Sweet Ears 'Pacific Gold'

Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’

Oncidium Sweet Ears 'Pacific Gold'

Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’