Color change over life of bloom

[Leucadian]

I noticed that the color of this flower has changed over the 2 weeks it's been open, from a peach-pink to a light lavender. The yellow/red lip remained.

Is this common? I have heard that Tolumnias can change due to fading of certain colors, but this is pretty dramatic.

The plant is a robust raffle prize, and I've only had it for 6 months. C. Orchidglade, probably a sibling to this awarded plant (C. walkeriana x C. aurantiaca), shown in the SVO plant archive.
Sunset Valley Orchids - Superior Hybrids for Orchid Enthusiasts

[silken]

Wow, that is a difference. And both are lovely. I have had pale pink ones deepen in colour a bit. And as the bloom gets old, change a bit but not to that extreme if the photos are accurate. There is one photo in OrchidWiz that shows a spike with orange blooms and another with pale lavender and it seems that it could be the same plant. If so, it must be an older and newer spike and doing what yours did.

There are some Richard Mueller hybrids that do change a lot, but that is because of the species in Richard Mueller, which aren't in yours.

I guess you get the best of both colours!

[PaphMadMan]

Fading yellow isn't totally unexpected in a Gur. aurantiaca cross, here revealing the C. walkeriana-like color that was always there. This does seem particularly striking though. Has it been hot there?

[Leucadian]

For coastal San Diego, it's been warm: low 80 daytime, high 60's night. Is fading more common in high heat?

I had to double check myself to make sure the photos were of the same plant, not that I have more than 1 of this cross, and nothing else like this in bloom right now. Both photos are mine. The link is to the SVO web site, which as I said I think is the source of this plant. Their photo looks like my 'fresh' one.

I like both colors, no matter.

[Tindomul]

I think that's cool! I've had several Catt types change colours on me, but never that much. Also, I am no expert but I think temperature can affect the colours of the blooms when the flowers are developing, so the same plant can produce differently coloured (but not by much) blooms over a life time.

[voyager]

I have an Odontoglossum intergeneric NoID that starts a light purplish and turns almost black as the flower ages.
Or, at least it did the first time it bloomed for me.
That was 3 years ago. The spike was broken off above the 1st flower in a storm that year.
Last year, it was again broken off before it was able to produce even 1 flower.
This year, it has been able to make 2 buds before the tip of the spike was broken off by T.S. Darby. I'm hoping it will make it to these two buds opening and being able to see the color change again.
Now I worry that I might have been hallucinating the color change. Plus, did it start light then turn dark, or start dark and turn light? It has been a long time waiting to see this again. Maybe this is the year.

[PaphMadMan]

Temperature during bud development can have profound effect on color development, and heat can maximize whatever color fade might be normal for the flower anyway, but it is virtually impossible to generalize. Complex hybrids can have genes from a dozen different species contributing to color, and interacting in unique ways when they end up together in a hybrid. And other environmental factors like temperature can contibute too, in equally complex ways.

In this simple primary hybrid we know the yellow base color comes from the Gur. aurantiaca parent. Orange flowers in that species sometimes don't fade much, but some yellow variants can fade to almost white. Even within the species it isn't uniform. As I said, it isn't unusual to see yellow fade in Gur. aurantiaca hybrids, but it isn't universal. Here the yellow in the base of the lip comes from C. walkeriana, and hasn't faded. In another year with different conditions the change may not be so dramatic.

[No-Pro-mwa]

Very cool.