Orchid Borealis

Cattleya harrisoniana Cattleya loddigesii and Cattleya harrisoniana are beautiful species; the shape of the flower is well-proportioned and appealing to me.  I'm not completely sure if my plants are correctly identified, but I decided to make a comparison between them since they flowered at the same time since these two species look very similar. The web pages of Miranda Orchids used to contain extensive information about Cattleya .  Unfortunately, these pages were gone after the redesign.  But the previous informative web site can be found in Internet Archive ( link ), and the differences of C. loddigesii and C. harrisoniana are described here .  According to the web page, the geographic distributions of these two species are mostly not overlapping; C. harrisoniana in the east, coastal region and C. loddigesii in the west, interior region of Brazil.  there are some area where two species co-occur.  The flowering season is different; C. loddigesii i...

Cattleya maxima is one of the oldest described species of Cattleya .  Lindley described C. maxima in 1831, after describing the first Cattleya , C. labiata , in 1821.  Four additional bifoliate Cattleya (each pseudobulb usually produces 2 leaves) were described between these two species.  Although it was the second described unifoliate (single-leaf) Cattleya , it was the first species discovered in this genus.  Spanish botanists sent the herbarium specimen of C. maxima in 1777, but nothing was done to the specimen for over 50 years.  Chadwick and Chadwick (2006) contains the details of the history of the discovery, disappearance, and re-discovery of this beautiful species.  You can also read the story in their web site ( link ). Some unifoliate Cattalya are difficult to identify because they look similar.  But C. maxima is relatively easy to recognize due to the unique floral feature, the yellow stripe in the middle of the lip.  This featu...

Happy Holidays!  The day length around this time of the year is pretty short in Fairbanks, Alaska. Around the winter solstice, we get about 3 hours and 40 minutes.  My 6-year-old son started to attend a kindergarten this fall, and he is learning a lot.  He recently started to correct my English pronunciation, and "solstice" is one of the words which he corrected my pronunciation!  3 hours and 40 minutes sounds pretty dark for people who haven't lived in high latitudes, but actually we get long twilight, so it is a beautiful time of the year.  But many of us get excited that a half of the winter is over, and we will be gaining day light quickly. Ice fog in Fairbanks, around the noon, close to the winter solstice. There are several Japanese traditions to celebrate the winter solstice.  One of them is called Yuzu-yu.  We put oranges, called Yuzu ( Citrus junos ), to the bath.  We can't find this particular orange, so we just put normal orange...

This was flowering around January 1, 2016.  I have forgotten to post it.  I got it from Florália .  It came as Cattleya nobilior coerulea x coerulense.  It tried to flower a couple times, but they blasted.  I moved to warmer grow tent, and I finally get to see the flowers.

My friend, Mauro Rosim, told me that the identification of this plant is not correct.  It is probably an undescribed species.  I'm leaving the information about C. mirandae in this post, and I'll try to update the post when I learn more about this undescribed species. Cattleya mirandae  was described relatively recently (2005;  IOSPE link ).  It was originally described as  Hoffmannseggella mirandae ( link to the photo of the original description).   The genus name of this group has been bounced around quite a bit, and it could be confusing.  After looking into the evidences presented by molecular phylogeny, I think that rumping them into Cattleya appears to be the least confusing treatment scientifically.  Some hobbyists don't feel right about this, but we should evaluate the evidence under the principle of the Latin binomial system, where the genus name should represent the evolutionary relationships.   This article by van den...

This species used to be under genus  Sophronitis , but now it is transferred to genus Cattleya to make the scientific names to be informative about their evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships ( van den Berg 2008 ). I've been having difficult time growing the other species in the Sophronitis group, but Cattleya cernua is probably the easiest one, and it grows well in intermediate temperature.  When I was growing C. cernua in the cooler end of intermediate (lowest temp of 13C = 55F), the plant grew ok, but it became quite purplish and didn't flower so well.  Now it seems to be happier with max/min temperature of 27/16C (80/60F). I purchased my plant from Florália a couple years ago, and it is supposed to be from Bahia .  I've heard that those Bahia plants are natural tetraploid, but I haven't confirmed this.  It is supposed to have bigger leaves and flowers than the other populations. Here is a related link about the culture of this group . The ...

This one flowered out-of-season.  This species is supposed to flower in the spring to early summer.   But since it is a recent import from Brazil, its clock hasn't been reseted yet.  I received it in May 2015 from Bela Vista Orchids of Brazil.  Transition from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere could be interesting for plants.  Generally, most orchids seem to reset the clock within a year or so. Cattleya warneri is closely related to Cattleya labiata .  One of the main differences is the flowering time: C. warneri flowers in the spring and C. labiata flowers in the fall.  Also the geographic distributions are separated.   C. warneri is found in South Bahia, Esprito Santo (the center of the distribution) and Minas Gerais.  Earlier, this species was also found in Rio de Janeiro.  On the other hand, C. labiata shows a more northern distribution (Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas).  Here is a wikipedia pa...

I recently got this plant from Bela Vista Orchids of Brazil (so I can't take the credit of blooming it) as  Cattleya blumenscheinii .  But it doesn't quite look like the other photos of this species.  Can anyone comment on the identification?  I'm still learning about this group, and it is pretty difficult to gather taxonomic information.  I think there are some natural hybridization/introgression, too, which makes taxonomy more difficult. Cattleya blumenscheinii  is named in honor of Almiro Blumenschein, who was an executive director of Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation ( EMBRAPA: Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria ). From what I have read, this species grows in highly exposed rocky cliff around 1200m elevation in the state of Espirito Santo and Minas Gerais, Brazil.  There aren't so many info about this species, and mine looks somewhat different from the photos I have found (e.g.  SOF  and  IOSPE ).  The co...