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.

[orchidsarefun]

Thanks for posting. I have about 5 seedlings of my Why Not x blc Marquette's Canary, big floofy, coming on slowly. All Why Not crosses I've seen tend to favour that parentage and yours is another one

[SaraJean]

That’s just lovely! I just ordered 3 L harpophylla x Ctna Why Not ‘Red Gold’ seedlings from the speaker at our next orchid society meeting that I am really looking forward to. I’ll be curious to talk to him about the breeding trends

Originally Posted by estación seca

It's interesting to see these Cattleya alliance crosses.


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.

that is unfortunate, but I’m glad to see this trend changing
I’ve found myself more and more drawn to the crosses that have a high percentage of bifoliates or other Brazilian species in them, like the rupicolous laelias. Those clusters of flowers beat out the big fluffy blooms for me every single time. How I have gone from having no Cattleyas this time last year (with the exception of an Iwangara Appleblossom that I bloomed, decided I didn’t like, and has been laying rootless on its side for the last 2 years on the back of a bench, now with 4 spikes ) to having over 25 Cattleyas is beyond me..