Blc. Pink Empress Ju Shen - Growth and blooming pattern
 

Hello everybody!
I've just purchased my first big cattleya, the hybrid Blc. Pink Empress. I couldn't help but having this beauty with me.

When I received the orchid (which by the way is a very large plant... with 3 directions of growth) I immediately noticed a green sheath, flat and with no buds inside...
Currently, the orchid is pushing hard a new growth which is still pretty tiny but it's growing visibly bigger and bigger every day. Also, the roots are active and they're branching from older roots.

At this point, I don't know if I should expect to see buds forming in that green sheath or if the orchid has already decided to move forward to new growths.
Could that be a blind sheath? (how lucky! :biggrin:)

I don't know much about cattleyas and I'd love to read about your experience with this hybrid.
When it blooms for you, if it can develop buds and new growths at the same time, if it blooms multiple times per year, if the green sheath gets back to life in fall/winter....

Any information you'd like to share, I'll love to read!
Thank you!:)
Ala

Nice! Having a sheath is a good sign.

Just keep looking after the orchid as usual - providing good lighting conditions, and other healthy growing requirements ------ and then try to not think much of the sheath.

If budding activity does happen to occur at a later stage, then just maintain the same orchid care. And then hopefully the buds progress on to the opening stage.

There's some nice information about this one at : click here.

It's probably not possible to tell whether a sheath is 'blind' or not ------ for a mature size orchid that is. For super young orchids (immature ones) that develop small sheaths ------- then those sheaths generally (or even always) never produce buds.

Some sheath tips turn brown and dry up, appearing as if it aborted early. Then, months later, buds appear and bloom.

Absolutely. Some orchid sheaths can sit there with no activity for half a year or so before anything happens. And other sheaths can turn brown coloured or even black coloured ----- and budding activity can still occur from that point onward.

I forgot to mention ------ and then there are other behaviours of some other catts --- where the buds are developed and poking out of the sheath before the leaves (of the new bulb) have finished growing.

oh wow!

so, reading your comments I understand that even if the orchid is growing a new growth, this doesn't mean necessarily that the older growth with the sheath couldn't bloom later.

Also, I want to mention that the new growth is sprouting from another direction of growth... not from the same where there's the pseudobulb with the sheath.
And the pseudobulb with the sheath is making roots now. But considering that a lot of cattleyas make roots before blooming... that should be a good sign :D

I don't know! Cattleyas confuse me :biggrin:

What you mentioned is true. A sheath on a mature (flowering size) catt on any bulb - regardless of whether there are new sprouts/shoots on some other portion of the plant ------ can indeed still develop flower buds from that sheath.

Also ----- what I was meaning in my previous post --- is that a new bulb that has new leaves that hasn't finished growing yet --- may also have a sheath --- and that sheath can begin to have buds popping out of the sheath well before the leaves are fully grown and fully extended ----- such as seen at this link here.

Yes! I've understood that! And I'm amazed by the unpredictability of cattleyas - hybrids especially!
I also know that some type of cattleyas can bloom both with a sheath and without!