C. Caudebec x Gct. Why Not

[estación seca]

It's interesting to see these Cattleya alliance crosses.

I'm not a Cattleya orchid hybridization historian. It seems to me very early hybrids were made based on what was blooming in the greenhouse at the same time, so some interesting things happened.

Then there was a long period in which attention was devoted to big, flat flowers, and everything else relegated to "novelty" status, or "not worth making" in practice. Part of this was related to availability of parent material. You can't make a Broughtonia hybrid unless you have a Broughtonia, and you won't grow one because you've filled your greenhouse with huge unifoliate Catts.

So we had a period of well over 150 years of endless floofy Catts. Bifoliate breeding was pretty much ignored, though flowering bifoliates are amazing. They aren't big and floofy, though. Judging standards drove this, at least partly, I think.

Now people are releasing more and more wildly varying crosses. Part of this may be from the desire to grow smaller plants. A huge unifoliate Cattleya cross won't fit on a windowsill.

I see the same thing in Vandas. We see endless round, huge flowers in well-presented clusters, in varying colors, with spots or not. They are beautiful. This is what judging standards demand. I find the other kinds of crosses far more interesting and worth growing.