Cattleya mossiae coerulea
 

Hey everyone!

So, here's another mossiae (out of I don't even know how many I have) that's decided to start blooming a little off-season - it still has 2 more sheaths, but this was the only one so far that decided summer was a good time to push forth some buds.

This is quite a large plant, and it is a bit crammed in my current setup; I'll be moving soon (hopefully), so the next bloomings might turn out better with more sunlight instead of LEDs.

The colour is amazing, as I expected from a coerulea, but the size of the flowers appears quite average - this one is still opening up and the 2 others haven't begun, but my semi-alba (which I posted not long ago) remains undefeated for size: 20cm vs maybe 13/14cm if this one flattens out a bit more on the next few days.
I'll drop an update when the 3 flowers are open!

All in all, I'm happy though; it is lovely. I have one other coerulea (which came from Hilmar at Asendorfer), can't wait till it's big enough to see the differences between the two.

It's very pretty. And yes, the plants do get large and like to spread out (I see that you've made an effort to tame this habit with twine). But I think that, if you don't know how many mossiaes you have, this is a good time to consider shipping a few of them to the US. I will gladly take any Cattleya mossiae that I can get my hands on, and I will be happy to do you the favor of reducing your collection to a more manageable number of plants. Seriously, that's a lovely C. mossiae you have. Congratulations.

Thanks Steve! Sadly, we don't have permission to import / export plants from / to the US here in Portugal - still couldn't figure out exactly why it was never approved... But I do have a lot of different varieties of mossiae; they were hard to come by though, ahahah. I believe I have 2 coeruleas, 1 semi-alba, 1 alba, 1 tipo, 1 suave and 1 concolor (definitely NOT obsessed with the species, I'm sure you could tell), but growing them in a windowsill under LEDs doesn't quite seem to yield the best results. Fortunately, I will have outdoor space in my new house to have a greenhouse of sorts (and to tread down Roberta's path and end up filling the whole backyard in a few years, ahahah)

:rofl:

Here's an update, btw; the 3 buds are now open! The first one is a bit larger than the other two, and they got kind of stuck against another sheath, but oh well, ahahah.

The fragrance has already kicked in and it's absolutely FANTASTIC - not quite the same as the semi-alba, which was a lot more intense and not as sweet (more citrus-y?), but I just love both anyway.