Help Identifying Catasetum, please?
 

Hey people, bought a catasetum at a knock-down price a while back ($10 give or take -- and it's a HUGE plant with 5 new leaf growths and 3 flower stems!). It's recently flowered, and despite extensive internet searches I've not been able to identify it -- hope someone here can help!

C. tenebrosum perhaps?

Definitely not tenebrosum, not the species anyway.

I believe you have a hybrid there and if that's the case it'll likely be impossible to ID. The hybrids can have some of the most incredible variations w/in a cross so it makes them very hard to ID. Even impossible.

As an example...I had 2 of the same hybrid seedling (siblings!) and they bloomed out radically different. So different in fact that they almost didn't look like they were flask-mates.

You have an unknown (or NoID) Ctsm and it's beautiful but it will most likely always a NoID.

It looks like Ctsm Fanfair to me. With hybrids it's almost impossible to be 100% sure, but that's what I was reminded of when I saw it.

Looks to have some fimbriatum in there, but with all siblings being different and so many crosses you probably won't have a definite ID.

I agree that it is not a species Ctsm. Especially not tenebrosum.

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Thank you reliablefool -- your suggestion prompted a search on Google which led me to this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dash3echo/8018441126/

Ctsm. Fanfare Shawna Austin, AKA Ctsm. Fanfair (Ctsm. expansum x Ctsm. saccatum), it says -- I do believe we have a match! Thanks for your help, guys! :biggrin:

My guess is a complex hybrid with fimbriatum or Doris's choice involved, but impossible to tell. Beautiful anyway.

Could it be that you had one which bloomed with male flowers and one with female? Catasetums produce 2 distinct sexes of flower on the same plant and, whilst young, may produce only male or only female flowers, which look radically different. The flowers in my OP are male, here's what the female flowers look like -- totally different:

Nope. I'm all too familiar w/the differences between male and females so, no, that wasn't the issue. I have been getting an incredible number of plants blooming out female the past few years and it's quit frustrating but I've seen it so often that I can now usually tell if the flower will be male or female shortly after the buds begin to swell. I'm not a fan of the most of the female flowers but it is cool when I get a spike w/both sexes.

Thanks for the idea though.