Orchid cacti hybrids are the most beautiful plants among all epiphytic cacti. Despite not a valid, described name, these multi-hybrids of several genera of unclear parentage are suggested to be collected under the name ×Epicactus. Breeding of orchid cacti began in the 19th century. For the first, pollen of several taxonomically distant genera was used in the fertilisation. However, the flowers set fruit rarely. In the opinion of Gräser, in these rare cases, the pollen does not take part in the fertilisation, only broke the border on self-incompatibility. In the Botanical Garden of the Eötvös Loránd University, we succeeded to germinate and grow up plants of several ×Epicactus × Echinopsis crosses. In the crosses, the maternal parent was mostly Disocactus phyllanthoides ’Deutsche Kaiserin’, whereas the pollen parents were Echinopsis-multihybrids. Back cross was also successful, the pollen of which plants were used to establish F2 generation (×Epicactus × [Echinopsis × ’Deutsche Kaiserin’]). One ornamental line was selected among the seedlings which is described here: ×Epicactus ’Ave del Paraíso’ hybr. nov.
