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...

Few pictures from Montreal orchid show

Paph. sangii - first time I see this species in person:



Paph. Fumi's Delight x micranthum.




Paph. rothschildianum.





Paph. Lippewunder x In-Charm White.



Masd. coccinea v. alba.



Phal. Tyin Shin Popularity



Blc.Young Min Orange.



Blc_Hwa Yan Pearl.

Fish fertilizer for orchids

Ok, I keep and keep reading everywhere about benefits of organic based fish fertilizers for orchid growth. Finally I decided to buy and try one.
Not much choice we have in our stores here, so I ended up with something called Muskie fish emulsion fertilizer 5-1-1 by Green Earth.



On opening the bottle I noted that it looks and smells really gross, hopefully small amount diluted in water won't stink that much...
5-1-1 is the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash in the contents of the bottle. I usually feed my orchids with balanced 20-20-20 ferts at quarter strength, so I don't think complete switch to Muskie will be good. I decided to alternate between my All purpose 20-20-20 and Muskie 5-1-1.
We'll see how it works out.

Phal. lueddemannianna blooms

And bloom is upside down:



Not sure why. Spike was really short and I was afraid that it will get burried back into bark. It didn't, but spike turned over.
There is one more spike with bud coming up. I wonder if that one will flower correctly:

Mounted cattleyas

I was repotting my catts and decided to make it more interesting:



Smaller one on the left is laelia alaorii - miniature cattleya with bell shape flower. O the right - laelia sincorana var. coerulea. I already tried to mount cats on this wood, but it was before tanks and didn't work in too dry house conditions. Hope it works this time.

I think it looks cute.