Rth. Chief Glory ‘Red Ant’
 

I got this as a bag baby from a hardware store about a year ago and here we are! I didn’t have high hopes for this and am still debating on moving it somewhere else more shaded(this gets hours of full summer sun), but I’m satisfied with the flower and the habit—I’m glad I got some contrast with the yellow lip and red/orange petals/sepals and the pseudobulbs are like green olives when they’re well watered! This plant is probably less than 5 inches tall including the flower, and the flower is about 1.5 inches in diameter.

This is literally the only cattleya that I’ve gotten to bloom from a new growth under my care, so hopefully this sets the tone for this year concerning cattleyas:rofl:

https://i.postimg.cc/zbfmmHqP/IMG-2360.jpg
Edited to include close up and side profile images from the next day

https://i.postimg.cc/9RRbD2V3/IMG-2364.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/NyWTPHhV/IMG-2366.jpg

Looks pretty nice to me.

Hey Gf,Ive got a couple of those I bought from Seattle Orchid, just Mine havent bloomed. Ive had mine over a year. Shows how good I am, oh well they are both still alive and seem healthy. Mines in lava rock.
I suppose its probably even warmer over there than here in Tx close to the gulf.

Congrats! It's little but mighty adorable, that's for sure. I'm not brave enough yet to mount any of my cattleyas. The closest I've come is potting them in slatted wooden baskets. I'm curious... on what do you have this one mounted? It looks very happy there :)

I think you’re right about his being mounted,I’ve got to learn to be a lot more observant when I look at posted pictures.
On looking again,it looks like it’s on a limb, or section of one.

Absolutely stunning! I love the contrast between petal/sepals and lip.

Thank you, Ray—I have our OB colleagues, Kelpak, and this plant’s will to live to thank for this:rofl:

---------- Post added at 08:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:17 AM ----------

You might be in for a surprise, WD—my sheath produced a bud seemingly out of nowhere on mine! I got it mid-March of 2024 with what looked like the beginnings of a new growth, mounted it May 1st after it hadn’t done anything out on the porch, and by July it turned out that the nub I had been watching wasn’t a new growth at all.

The growth that produced this flower was discovered on July 9th, which means I eagerly watched this thing do nothing for nearly 4 months while entirely convinced something was on the horizon:rofl:

Curious to see how it will react to the summer this year now that it has its bearings!

---------- Post added at 09:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:38 AM ----------

Thank you, Marie!

Oh this thing could fit in a shirt pocket—a real mini! I’m a cattleya newbie, so my choice to mount was not an educated one—I just think things growing on trees look cool:rofl:and it worked out for this one(…for now)! The style points of tree mounting don’t translate into utility, though—the slat baskets offer all the air and drainage of the tree with the added convenience of being able to move the plant when it’s showtime or if there’s inclement weather on the way. As for the tree it’s on, that’s a Pygmy date(Phoenix roebelenii), a common installation in cookie-cutter, builder-grade landscapes—you’ve probably seen them everywhere!

---------- Post added at 09:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 AM ----------

Thank you, FranningtonBear! I needed something to break up the pinks, purples, and whites that dominate the front of the house, so I decided to punctuate the existing color scheme with flashes of red from this Cattleya and some red Tolumnias!

A note about blooming habit... The small size and the brilliant color often come from Sophronitis (Cattleya) coccinea, this one is almost half S. coccinea (with a complex ancestry) And it is typical for Sophronitis (as well as some other small Catts, the Hadrolaelia group) to pop the buds directly out of the newly opening leaves rather than developing a sheath. Looks like this characteristic is dominant here.

That feature is pretty gratifying now that I think of it in hindsight—I like the “instant” gratification of a getting a flower once the leaf opens!

It's all about ancestry... Sophronitis and Hadrolaelia Catt species do that naturally, when then are dominant in a hybrid, that's one of the results. If other Catt group are dominant you get sheaths. If C. walkeriana is involved, you may get flowers coming from odd little growths with only minimal leaf. Sometimes.