Cattleya loddigesii var. alba

A new cattleya plant I brought from Montreal orchid show. An alba variaton of Cattleya loddigesii ordered from Orchis Floriculturing in Taiwan.



It is a blooming sized plant judjing by traces of spent flower stalks in all the mature pseudobulbs. There is a little green nub of new bulb start, hopefully it will be blooming for me when ready.

I have to get a few of smallish cattleya plants to keep in high light areas of my orchid tanks to provide some shade for paphs and phals. The previous residents - tenebrosa, purpurata and aurantiaca cross grew too tall and had to move out.

Since there are thousands of crosses exist in Cattleya alliance I decided to limit myself to getting species only, so there will be some kind of theme in my cattleya collection...

Repotting catts

I spent half a day yesterday moving some of my catts to larger pots. Not because they grew a lot of p-bulbs, but in the tank their roots gone really wild sticking out in every each direction and bursting out of pots.
I ripped out a big deal of good roots when trying to remove them from clay pots (that's a downside of clay with its porous nature - the roots grab on it for good).

Some of the plants had pots totally filled with roots:



and wouldn't want to move out of the pot at all. So I had to take a hammer and literally break the pot on some of them:



I took the pots couple sizes larger so I don't have to do it very often, but now need to watch out for overwatering.
Here they are all repotted:

Cattleya kerrii

Cattleya kerrii is another one from Clouds orchids.
Supposedly the large seedling it has a sheath already. Apparently sometimes very young plants can produce sheath, but often they don't result in blooms. My case is probably an example of it.



It is a small sized cattleya too (I have to remember my space limitations), also from Brazil. Interesting that its population in the wild is very limited and according to this post C.kerrii is considered an endangered species.
Name kerrii was given in honour of english botanist Kerr who lived in the beginning of 20st century.

I like the look of the blooms, it is quite different from usual cattleya flowers.

Cattleya schilleriana

For some reason I always order catts from Clouds in the fall. This year I just randomly looked through their catalogue and found catt. schilleriana listed there. I wanted it for a while and decided to get one even though it is just a seedling.
Naturally it had to have a travelling companion(actually three), so I got four cattleyas.
Here is the one that is responsible for the whole order - Cattleya schilleriana:



I like ordering from Clouds, their plants are always extremely healthy and something listed as medium seedling usually looks substantial enough to pass for a large one.

Cattleya schilleriana is a small sized fragrant catt. that originated from Brasil. You can see the bloom picture here.
On the website about orchid species its synonym listed as C. aclandiae var. schilleriana. So, I guess my schilleriana is a close relative of aclandiae - another small fragrant cattleya I would like to get, especially the coerulea var.
Leaves are a bit dark comparing to my other cattleyas and, I checked, they are supposed to have red tinge on the underside.

My plant came potted into plastic pot with moss - road to death for any cattleya under my care, so I repotted it into clay pot with chc right away.

Hopefully it will adjust to the new conditions without problems.

Cattleya araguaiensis II

Yet one more attempt to have Cattleya araguaiensis. The small seedling I have already will take ages to recover and some more ages to grow to blooming size. This one is already adult plant.



There is even a new pseudobulb starting, hopefully it will bloom when mature.

Every Catt. araguaiensis I tried to buy(and this one is the third one) had some black and brown patches on the leaves. I mean, there should be a way to grow cattleya with nice foliage so it doesn't look like cr*p when out of bloom.

Cattleya araguaiensis

I got Cattleya araguaiensis from Ecuagenera preorder last March. Plant looked very sad - two wrinkled leaves with black spots and no healthy roots at all. I paid $25 for it and was really disappointed, but still took it, since it was the top of my "most wanted" list.
I potted plant into chc and watered once a week. After a while I noticed a new growth which is growing into a pseudobulb. Now I think it can be logged in here, since there is a chance plant will make it:



Old leaves still have the black and brown patches, I monitor them to make sure they don't get near the new growth, but they seem to stay the same.
Cattleya araguaiensis is still on my wish list, but that would be a blooming sized plant I want to get.