cattleya bloom pointing verticle

[orchididentification]

hey my cattleya royal emperor
just opened 3 hours ago but the flower is pointing directly up instead of side ways, is that normal, do they all open vertical and then turn horizontal.

thanks

[SouthPark]

The 'face' of the flower is facing the sky, right?

I don't know for sure the reason for it, or mechanisms behind it, but did come across these words ----- put these exact words into google search:

"Plants grown in high light often have strong upright inflorescence with flowers that face the sky"

The above words were for some other sort of orchid.

Observations of orchid flowers generally indicate the flower orientation is the usual one which we normally see. But sometimes - some face upward, some face downward. Probabilistic matters maybe.

It would be interesting to see which types of orchids have more chance of sky-facing flowers than others, when grown under 'usual' lighting conditions and 'usual' growing conditions.

[orchididentification]

Here is some photos.

please reply if you know why this is happening or how to fix

while the bud was developing it was horizontal in line with the horizon but a day before it opened it very quickly orientated itself vertical and then bloomed that way.

so far it has remained in that position but too be fair it has not finished uncurling the lip, hopefully when the flower is done forming it will face horizontal once again.

4.4 by orchididentification orchididentification, on Flickr

1.1 by orchididentification orchididentification, on Flickr

[SouthPark]

Don't worry too much about the final orientation. You can still take nice photos of it if it ends up facing the sky.

In fact, the force of gravity can even help sometimes - allowing the petals to open out all the way - giving the petals a nice helping hand.

You can be sure that this sky-facing thing won't occur for all of your future blooms. Just put it down to probability - a statistical thing.

Also - you may be right too. If the flower hasn't finished moving around yet, then it's also possible that the orientation can still change. It might not necessarily be the last of it!

[orchididentification]

[SouthPark]

I've uploaded a photo of one of my orchids. One flower faces the sky, while other one is has a sideway orientation.

I only want look at the nice flowers - shapes and colours. A camera aimed at the right spots will still produce nice photographs for good memories.

I'm going to be doing a very casual study on the life of sky-ward facing flowers when compared with the life regular facing flowers (on the same plants of course). That is - if we notice an orchid has skyward facing flowers, then just keep a mental note about whether those flowers outlast the other ones ----- that is, the very last flowers of the set of blooms (on the same plant) to wilt - will they be the sky-ward facing ones? Will be interesting to see.

At the moment, I have some kind of hunch that sky-ward facing flowers might outlast the other ones. And even if they really do - I wouldn't know what the mechanism is behind that - yet.

[orchididentification]

My orchid is a hybrid, Royal Emperor but I wonder if any wild orchids sometimes randomly point their blooms vertical. It makes be wonder in the wild if they are more or less likely to be pollinated.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by orchididentification

My orchid is a hybrid, Royal Emperor but I wonder if any wild orchids sometimes randomly point their blooms vertical.

Definitely - it does happen. It happens regardless of hybrid or species. But we also know that in a set of flowers in one bloom, on a spike ----- the flowers do not generally face directly upward or directly downward.