Lateral peloric flower to celebrate New Year

[Fairorchids]

Here is a seedling from Gold Country Orchids: (Rth. Love Sound x C. Circle of Life). It exhibits the somewhat uncommon lateral peloric flowers.

Happy New Year to everyone.

[Fuerte Rav]

Beautiful flower!

Can someone explain to me, in laymen's terms, 'lateral, peloric flowers' please? I've looked up peloric on the internet and just confused myself even more

[SouthPark]

Good question Fuerte.

The peloric word here - let's just focus on orchid flowers ------ means tepals (ie. petals and/or sepals) may have features seen in the lip/labellum. Sort of different from the 'usual' sort of flowers that don't have those features or traits. Some call it 'abnormality'. But maybe just consider it as a mutation feature.

As for 'lateral' - it's possible that some word or words have been left out. In this case, the peloric feature is seen in the 'lateral sepals' - which are the side-sepals ------ not the upper (dorsal) sepal.

[estación seca]

Peloric flowers are radially symmetric flowers appearing on plants that normally have zygomorphic (laterally symmetric) flowers. Most orchid flowers are zygomorphic because the lip is so different from the other flower parts.

The term is used in orchids to refer to petals (or here, sepals) that have lip-like characteristics. The best orchid example I can think of is in Cattleya intermedia, or any of the peloric Phalaenopsis. Look up the normal flowers, then the peloric flowers.

Most so-called peloric orchid flowers are not truly peloric because the other two petals are usually not identical to the lip.

In this case the characteristic is the lighter stripe down the centers of the lower two sepals. The lip, however, doesn't have this stripe.

[SouthPark]

For the flower in the opening post - the yellow colour in the sepals is seemingly linked to the yellow colour of the lip region - or the throat region. The lip in the background (which I assume is also from a flower from the same orchid) appears to have a lot of yellow colour.

Another example is in this link ----- where you can see that the 'ends' of the petals appears to have formed a 'lip'.

[Fairorchids]

Sorry for the brief description in the opening.

'Peloric' is normally understood to mean that the petals mimic the lip - at least partially.

'Lateral peloric' is short for 'peloric on the lateral sepals'. This occurs with some regularity in Cymbidiums, but is less common in Cattleyas.

While you can't see it in the flower facing the camera, there is a lot of yellow higher up in the lip (as can be seen on the partially hidden flower).

[Fuerte Rav]

Thanks everyone for teaching me something new.