Oncidium Twinkle ‘Fragrant Fantasy’

Oncidium Twinkle is one of the greatest miniature Oncidiums of all time.  Easy to grow, compact growth, profuse flowering, relatively disease free, and in a range of colours.  It is also in my mind one of the most frustrating Oncidiums of all time.  Pretty much all cultivars of Twinkle start forming flower spikes in January, which sit there for a whole 5 to 6 months promising you what a wonderful flower display they’ll put on, but not opening until the middle of June and into July or even August.  You need a pinch of patience to watch Twinkle go from spiking to flowering.

Twinkle is a simple F1 hybrid between Oncidium cheirophorum (pod parent) and Oncidium ornithorhynchum (pollen parent) and is credited to W. Moir of Hawaii back in 1958.  Although cheirophorum is a pure yellow Oncidium and ornithorhynchum is generally seen in shades of pink, Twinkle has produced a range of colours from white to red.  The best known cultivar is the white ‘Fragrant Fantasy’.  Several awarded plants have held between 1500 to 2000+ flowers on 20+ spikes, lucky I wasn’t the judge counting those flowers!

We grow our Twinkles under a 50% shade-cloth in a well drained bark and perlite mix.  The trick with Twinkle is too never ever over-pot the plant, they love to be root bound in a small pot.  I would even go as far to say you should never really grow a Twinkle in anything bigger than a 125mm squat pot.  The photo of the large Twinkle ‘Fragrant Fantasy’ shows what a specimen plant in a 125mm pot can do.  Even the ones we sell in 80mm squat pots would probably only require potting into a 100mm squat pot after flowering.

Twinkle has a fine root system which prefers a well drained bark mix.  We find that a 6 to 9mm bark mixed with some coarse perlite and little bit of 5mm charcoal is best.  This fine root system is very susceptible to the Orchid snail (Zonitoides arboreus), so make sure the snails don’t get anywhere near them.  Although they love a well drained potting mix they also like to stay well watered, so in summer they’ll need watering almost everyday.  Twinkles are also in active growth year round so top dress with some controlled release fertiliser like Osmocote in early spring and also liquid feed them at least once a week with a high potassium fertiliser like Peters Excel Calmag Finisher, at about half the recommended rate.  A light dusting of dolomite once a year also helps keep the pH up and feed the plant calcium and magnesium.

The flowers of Twinkle ‘Fragrant Fantasy’ are dominated by the white lip (see photos).  The flower opens with a pale green tinge and fades to it’s almost pure white over a few days.  As you can see from the photos Twinkle produces a lot of flowers.