Help with locating plant online

[whodattalking]

hi, this is my first post here. I belong to a Sunday Amateur Orchid Society and we have a raffle table. I won two plants that are the same with the name L. Purpurata Eliast x Epl. Westcon 'Golden Mendenhal'. they are very strong, big plants with long bloom spikes. I would like to find some info online, but cannot seem to find any. suggestions?

[PaphMadMan]

Welcome to the forum.

Let me try to re-interpret that name, which seems to have morphed somewhat from where I think it started: L. purpurata 'Elias' x Epl. Westconnett Gold 'Mendenhall'. This cross was registered as Cattleychea Newberry Butterscotch in 2008. It would have been Epilaelia (Epl.) rather than Cattleychea (Ctyh.) some years earlier, but Epilaelia would never have been official.

I doubt you will find much information about this relatively obscure cross. The flowers will probably look much like the shape of the C. (L.) purpurata parent, but clusters of smaller flowers, bright yellow with red lip. And the culture of the plant would be the same as C. (L.) purpurata as well, and that should be easy to find.

The cross was registered by Carter and Holmes, still a very active business, so they may have useful information.

The other parent, Ctyh. (Epl.) Westconnett Gold, is a cross of Psh. (E.) mariae x C. (L.) milleri.

Please post a picture of the plants and flowers when you can.

[estación seca]

Welcome to the Orchid Board!

There are so many hybrids, there is not specific information about all of them. You can probably find a lot of information on the species Laelia purpurata. All the different clones have the same growing requirements, and are wonderful plants.

Epilaelia is an artificial genus created by crossing plants in the naturally occurring genera Epidendrum and Laelia.

Is the Eliast part written inside single quotation marks 'like this'? This is the normal way specific clones are named. Is your tag broken? Maybe the person who copied out the tag made a mistake? If the trailing single quote is missing, part of the clonal name is probably missing.

You can often look up hybrids in the Royal Horticultural Society orchid hybrids registry:
The International Orchid Register / RHS Gardening
You typically enter the hybrid genus and then the grex name.

The RHS constantly changes names to match the latest fads in taxonomy. Many orchid genus names have been changed a lot in the last decades.

In this case RHS shows no Epilaelia Westcon. It says the nearest match is a plant called Cattleychea Westconnet Gold. This is a hybrid of Prosthechea mariae x Cattleya milleri.

In times past the first parent has been called an Epidendrum, and the second has been called Laelia milleri. In fact, almost all orchid people still refer to it as Laelia milleri. So Prosthechea mariae x Cattleya milleri might, in the past, have been called Epidendrum mariae x Laelia milleri, or an Epilaelia.

This is conjecture on my part. But it is a possible explanation - if your label is incomplete. If your plant does represent Laelia purpurata x (Prosthechea mariae x Laelia milleri), it would be a very unusual hybrid, unlike most kinds of hybrids produced. It will be great to see photos of the flowers.

A good place to look up orchid species is the Internet Orchid Species Photo Encyclopedia. You can find interesting information if you look up the possible three ancestors of your plant.

[whodattalking]

I have three bloom spikes and will post a picture when they come out. I appreciate all the information.

The tag was not broken. Eliast is not in quotes as 'Golden Mendenhal' is. The man who brought these to the meeting is almost 90 years old and has been growing orchids forever but never gives much information to the group.

Thanks again.

[Fairorchids]

Be aware that:

A. There have been a lot of taxonomic changes in the past 10-15 years. At this point, more than 75% of the original labels in the Cattleya family are out of date. The Westconnett Gold hybrid was registered in 1977, and at that time it was indeed an Epilaelia.

B. Some people use abbreviations for long names due to space constraints on the labels.

C. Even 90+ year old growers have been known to mis-transcribe information on new labels.

I have the task of producing a show table report from the monthly meeting in Deep Cut OS. Even plants entered by AOS judges are full of outdated information, and many contain minor spelling mistakes.