Bc Yellow Bird
 

This opened about a week ago. I should have taken photos then because the color changed. Initially, it was even more pale, with faint rusty red streaking throughout sepals and petals. Those gradually faded, and the color deepened slightly to the current color. The fragrance didn't show up at night until the color change was almost finished. The photo is not accurate, either; the flowers are much paler yellow than they appear here.

The nocturnal fragrance is sweet and does not carry far. I have to be close to the flower to smell it.

Depending on whether you like the color or not, it could be described as parchment yellow, or the color of dog urine on your school paper due this morning. Otherwise known as an "art shade."

This is SVO 22310. It came to me in very low sheath in December 2015. It has a dry bloom stalk from a previous attempt, but it looks as though those buds didn't open. There is another spike many weeks away from blooming. I see Fred still has it on offer on the Web site. I'm going to keep it despite the underwhelming color.

Nice one!

Very pretty!

That is a very bright yellow :) I did detect a scent on my yellow bird tonight, it was very sweet, I REALLY like it. It was just as you described it, not to strong but if you get close to the flower, you can smell it.


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Nice choice!! It's beautiful.

Once it gets some more size, it'll bloom more than once a year for you. Mine was ginormous when I got rid of it (overgrowing a 12" pot) and it would give me two big flushes of blooms every year. Great grower too because it grows "around" and will clump up nicely making a beautiful specimen in a relatively short period of time. I found that I had to divide it about every 3yrs just to keep it manageable for my space and it never skipped a beat even after a division...like clockwork...it would bloom right on time. Great plant!

I always loved the changing of the flower color...opening rusty colored and w/in a few days mine would turn a canary yellow. I've seen some paler yellow but they all usually open that rusty sort of color. It's the Richard Mueller (nodosa x milleri) parent that typically causes that changing of color.

You are going to love this beauty! :Tup:

Very pretty! I love how delicate it looks, and you can't beat fragrant orchids. Even if the tones are a little more muted than you hoped, I bet that it will grow on you. :)

It's very nice. I find quite a few of my Catts bloom a different degree of vibrant, depending how cool or warm the growing space is when they are in bud. Does your area differ much depending on season? If so, you might have more colour with the next spike.

Our temperatures vary a lot during the year, but the weather is pretty constant year to year during any season. The only constant unknowns are when it warms up in the spring and when the nights cool down in the fall.

Winters are cool and sunny. I need to use a heater to keep my sunroom at 60 F / 15C most nights, but if the sun is shining it's almost always 80 F / 27C or higher. I turned the heater off this week, and probably won't use it again until November. Winter here in the sunroom is perfect weather for Cattleya hybrids, most of which push new growth within a week of so of arrival. 60F nights are a little challenging for phals and some other tropical plants.

I have an evaporative cooler I am just able to move from a storage shed to the sunroom in the summer, but it doesn't cool during our monsoon, when the dew point is over 55 F / 13C. Summers are a big problem. I move a lot of plants into the house. I keep my house warmer than do most people here, but it's not as hot as the sunroom.

We have hit 100F / 38C as early as the first week of March and as late as the second week of June in the 30+ years I've been here. Generally, once it hits that mark, there's no turning back. About 1989 my swimming pool was above 85 degrees by the second week in March. Our latest frost on record was March 15, but we haven't had frost after the first week in February in over 30 years.

I think it's beautiful. If and when I reorder from SVO I hope I don't forget it again. Man that heat would kill me.

Katrina thanks I was wondering what the cross of the Richard Mueller was. So it's 3/4 nodosa? Where in the world did the spotted lip come from?

I was thinking that nodosa is the origin of the spotted lip, as it becomes more pronounced in its hybrids.

It's a very pleasant flower to look at. You might replace 'underwhelming' with 'subtle' :)