Lc. Mari's Magic, maybe, maybe not.

[Diane56Victor]

Just bought this plant a couple of weeks ago at a local show.
Beautifully clean and well presented with 4 blooms, and a couple of days ago another spike was noticed with 3 or 4 buds, yeah!

Then I saw a photo on the board from RJSquirrel showing a plant called Lc. Mari's Magic-Candy Sparks and the plant shown had different colour splashes on the petals. My thought was,
"Wonder where that colour splash came from?"
That set me looking, and every photo of Lc. Mari's Magic has splashes of colour on the petals, but mine are clear white.
The tag that came with the plant has the plant name, plus parents and a couple of repotting dates going back to 2016.

I'm hoping someone can let me know if there has been a Lc. Mari's Magic "?????" with just white petals?

[RJSquirrel]

Cattleya Mari'''s Magic

its close to some of the ancestors but In the family tree nothin seems to fit exact.

could be a throwback from being seed grown. seeds have a flower of their own.

thats a wonderful flower and just call it what tha tag says until you know different!!

[Dimples]

The flowers on seed-grown phals. will all look slightly different, but typically present within an expected range. They’re all the same genetic cross, but they’re like hundreds of fraternal twins.

[Roberta]

C Mari's Magic is C Mari's Song x C. Tokyo Magic. Mari's Song is the splash-petal source. But only one if its parents is splsh petal (C. Cherry Chip), the other parent, C. Irene Finney isn't. So while there's strong genetics for some amount of splash petal, it's only half. Then, the other parent is Tokyo Magic, yellow with red lip, not splash petal at all - and one of its parents is also Irene Finney. So just based on the parent generation, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting that splash petal (though Mari's Song is more dominant than that, I think) At any rate, for a seed cross, the odds of NOT getting the splash petal effect are actually better than getting it. Orchidwiz has a bunch of pictures of Mari's Song, and they are all over the map - from splash at the tips of the petals to dominant peloric pattern to no pattern at all. . So, luck of the draw. Difference between seed-grown plants (which this one very likely is, since it doesn't carry a cultivar name) and clones.

Even without the splash petals, yours is gorgeous! Beautiful form, and lloriforous. The ID likely is correct.

Another interesting tidbit...Pink flowers on both sides but also strong yellow especially from Tokyo Magic. The combination gives that pristine white. (You MIGHT even get some interesting colors just as the flowers open... sometimes the red pigment is slower to develop than the yellow, so it could start out a bit yellowish before it turns white. It may or may not, but the ancestry makes this phenomenon possible, not a surprise if it does show up)

[Diane56Victor]

RJSquirrel....
We must have looked at the same page, which prompted my question. I couldn't find a white one either, maybe I bought a unicorn plant!

Roberta...
Thank you for the in depth explanation and showing the odds on getting a plain white.
Interesting tidbit too, about the colour combination heritage giving the possibility of white blooms. Does this colour theme work with orchids in general?

Hopefully I see some of the interesting colour in action soon with the spike extending daily.

Thank you for the compliment, the way the photo turned out was pure chance but it certainly does the flower proud, very happy with the way that turned out.

[Diane56Victor]

Double post

[Roberta]

With regard to the question about color, think of the Paph. Armeni White. It is a primary cross, Paph armeniacum (deep chrome yellow) and Paph. delenatii (pink) When it first opens, it is very pale yellow, then in a week or so the pink pigment kicks in, and it becomes pure white.

I also have Blc Pollyana, which opens yellow, in a few days actually becomes lavender with yellow in the throat, you wouldn't know that it even had yellow in its background. Weird.

[Diane56Victor]

That is very interesting. I'm going to take a closer look at the heritage of quite a number of my plants now, especially those that have yet to bloom, and I have plenty of those!

[Roberta]

Another challenge in predicting what you're going to get... when a cross is made, the cultivars of the parents are in the hybridizer's notebook, not in the registration. So within a particular parent - hybrid or species - where there an be different color forms, you don't know which was used. So looking at photos of the parents (generic, not the specific ones used) also may give an inaccurate idea. That's a big part of the hybridizer's art... selecting the stud plants that are not only excellent but have the desired characteristics. Not simple...

[Diane56Victor]

I can imagine.

Thats why I really appreciate the growers who when making a new cross available say in the description what they expect from the cross, SVO is one example who does that. Luckily the importer/nursery here includes that in their sales description.

Sounds like trying to find out could be either a fun project or a lesson in futility!