The first in a series of articles on orchids we like and/or think are significant – lets have a look at Dendrobium Duno Kayla first a show favorite for its huge chunky segments – Dunokayla is;

Dendrobium Kayla x Dendrobium speciosum and it was registered by DUNO (down under native orchids) in 2007

Dendrobium Kayla is;

Lynette Banks x Tweed registered by C Brandon back in 1995

So is Dunokayla an improvement in kayla – if you ask any hobbyist – I asked a handful they all say yes yet Dunokayla has not won noticeably more awards that Kayla (as far as I could easily see they both have one HCC each) they do look amazing in photo graphical form and reasonable in real life.

The original Kaylas had speciosum National White as a parent in the background which while respected as a better clone is also notoriously slow growing and unreliable in flowering – an unfortunate trait that it passed on to the original Kaylas which were always going to be slow growing. There are remakes of Kayla around that are based on other speciosums – possibly easier plants to flower and grow – I have heard this a few times but we have a few Lynette Banks based hybrids – so far all have been terribly slow growing – we flowered a couple of 12yo Kayla seedlings for the first time this year and No it was not worth the wait 🙁 I am not sure what your opinion is but I think that probably plants that flower for the first time after 12 years are probably not ideal cultivars for wide spread cultivation.

If you have a comment please comment below!

Update – over a year and we have not written any more of these articles – hmm perhaps time to write a couple more. Also we have been repotting and found 5 x seedling duno kalylas unflowered hanging around…the oldest is a 2004 cross….so 12 years old. All have been repotted and put in a nice premium spot so fingers crossed for some flowers next year 😉