Cattleya Loddigessii 'Blue Sky'

[mopwr]

Hey everyone, was out recently to one of the closest growers to me (still a bit of a hike) to see what plants they had and what was in bloom this time of year and to my surprise I found a plant I'd been looking for for some time - Cattleya Loddigessii 'Blue Sky'. I'd only ever seen pictures of it online, but immediately recognized the flower when I walked past it.

I noticed it seemed to be a lot bigger than what I thought it would be, even though I know biofoliates are typically tall plants, so I didn't question it too much. I liked it so much, that the following week I went back to get another one. When I returned to buy the other one, I was told that the one I had gotten the first time was mislablled (in my favor, apparently) and was really a more rare 'Blue Sky' 4N and if they did have anymore they were significantly more expensive and I couldn't afford it anyways; As luck turned out though, they did have another plant of the original 'Blue Sky' (2N) that was ready for dividing that I could get a piece of if I wanted to.

A couple of things here:

1. I had no idea there were 4N versions of 'Blue Sky', I'm assuming it was a selected treated selfing?
2. The plants clearly have some differences on growth and flower size. It was told me that the 4N has larger size flowers with fuller / rounder petals, but fewer overall flowers. The plants I have have ~3" flowers (2N) and flowers a hair over 4" (4N).
3. I now have a plant of each "version" as it were, and for the first time, a mislabeling worked out in my favor.

Either way, I thought I'd share some pics and photos for reference and see what I could learn about these. The close-ups are largely of the "4N" version, the 2N flowers are a bit damaged because it was a recent division they made for me off of an overgrown plant and the flowers were crowded / banged up by other plants; the mother plant had multiple blooming growths where the flowers were just as flat and shapely as the 4N plant, though the petals were definitely not as round. In regards to plant size, I'll say that the 4N is bigger, and being as it's younger, should likely get even bigger next year, the 2N came off of a very mature plant overgrown in an 8" pot, so I'm assuming those canes are maxed out. In any event, I'm super excited to finally have these in my collection.

[orchidman77]

These are both spectacular! I love this particular clone of the species.

re: the 4N/2N difference - very likely, the 2N was cloned and the 4N was a spontaneous mutation. If it's correctly labeled 'Blue Sky' 4N, it's not a selfing - it should have been tissue cultured for proliferation and the doubled chromosomes were an "added bonus" for flower size, substance and quality.

this presentation from Harry from H&R taught me so much about ploidy, you might enjoy listening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePl-c6W8ywQ

If you ever have a back division of the 4N down the road, I'll happily pay for it!

David

[isurus79]

That's really nice and great to see the polyploid next to the diploid! 'Blue Sky' is most likely a cross between loddigessii and harrisoniana (hence the bloom time), but it's beautiful, none-the-less!

[mopwr]

Originally Posted by orchidman77

re: the 4N/2N difference - very likely, the 2N was cloned and the 4N was a spontaneous mutation. If it's correctly labeled 'Blue Sky' 4N, it's not a selfing - it should have been tissue cultured for proliferation and the doubled chromosomes were an "added bonus" for flower size, substance and quality.

this presentation from Harry from H&R taught me so much about ploidy, you might enjoy listening...

I watched that whole thing and it was fascinating, thanks for that. The one I got was labelled 'Blue Sky' 4N, and I even recall them saying is was something of a clonal mutation, but I hadn't heard of that happening before without being treated. Now my mind is racing just thinking of all of the possible clonal varieties out there that I had wanted, but in a 4N version.

It was super interesting too to learn about how selfing / crossing a 4N hybrid yields consistent offspring. I'm assuming that works for selfing 4N species? I may have to rewatch some parts of that, but I assume it's a similar function.

Originally Posted by isurus79

That's really nice and great to see the polyploid next to the diploid! 'Blue Sky' is most likely a cross between loddigessii and harrisoniana (hence the bloom time), but it's beautiful, none-the-less!

That's pretty interesting, I've heard of a few awarded species plants that have been suspected of being hybrids, couple that with the fact that harrisoniana is fairly similar in shape and I guess it's possible.

I will say that amoung species cattleyas, it's crazy to see the amount of variation that breeders have selected out. Depending on the clone, I feel like I could have a few loddigesii, and have enough variation between them that I could convince some that they're all different species. To that end, I saw your video on loddigesii, and I will definitely need to get one of those rounder-petaled, wide-flared-lip types - they look so full.

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by mopwr

That's pretty interesting, I've heard of a few awarded species plants that have been suspected of being hybrids, couple that with the fact that harrisoniana is fairly similar in shape and I guess it's possible.

Its really mind blowing how many awarded plants that are likely hybrids. There are plenty of reasons for this and the AOS doesn't seem to interested in becoming a taxonomic entity with the intent of changing awards or species names, for obvious reasons! So us hobbyists will just have to keep track of such things as we add to our collections.

Originally Posted by mopwr

I will say that amoung species cattleyas, it's crazy to see the amount of variation that breeders have selected out. Depending on the clone, I feel like I could have a few loddigesii, and have enough variation between them that I could convince some that they're all different species. To that end, I saw your video on loddigesii, and I will definitely need to get one of those rounder-petaled, wide-flared-lip types - they look so full.

Anything with 'A-Doribil' in the background seems to fit that description! I think a bunch of the Florida breeders are selling offspring fairly regularly.

[orchidman77]

Stephen, I didn't realize that Blue Sky was also a suspected hybrid! Thanks for sharing.

I would imagine that 4N selfings of species plants would turn out no differently to 2N selfings which are quite common. They'd still exhibit small differences due to unique sets of displayed genes, even though according to the genome theory of breeding complete sets of genomes would be present - it's at that point that I believe primary hybrid 4N selfings are more desireable, as each species has an intact set of genes for each gamete produced.

I was able to find a 4N C. Triumphans seedling (yay!) and will definitely plan to self it as soon as I feel the plant can support a pod. I'm going to be very interested in seeing the results in....a decade or so, but my feeling is that they'll all be fairly uniform, with some resembling either parent more (dowiana + rex) which is fairly standard anyway.

The other reason: I could have an entire bench of Triumphans and be a very happy orchid grower, so the more the merrier!

David

[Louis_W]

Thats an amazing plant!

Originally Posted by orchidman77

I would imagine that 4N selfings of species plants would turn out no differently to 2N selfings which are quite common. They'd still exhibit small differences due to unique sets of displayed genes, even though according to the genome theory of breeding complete sets of genomes would be present - it's at that point that I believe primary hybrid 4N selfings are more desireable, as each species has an intact set of genes for

Ya selfing a 4n plant should give you a variety of seedlings, all 4n, although sometimes genomes can revert to 2n spontaniously. Ive heard of thia happening more with larger genomes. I'm not sure I'd be curious if the variability of the seedlings is greater for a 4n selfing. I could see it being more because there are more genes to choose from. I could also see it being less because double genomes seem to express less "errors."

As for the primary hybrid desirability I don't see why it would give more advantages or desirable traits than it would for a species. A larger variety of potential traits?