Yellow Dend missing petals! Nuts!
 

Hi guys! I haven't posted in here in forever - but I had to share this with my orchid geeks :) So I have this yellow dendrobium (yellow song 'canary') and it just started blooming...and I'm noticing that the blooms have only 3 petals! They have no sepals! Its bonkers. I'm suspecting virus...has anyone ever experienced this before, or seen it happen on another plant?

I've not seen anything like that. I'm wondering if it could be due to temp changes or something cultural that happened while buds were developing. Or, maybe it wanted a temp or other change and didn't get it. But, that does look odd, no matter what happened. I don't know if a virus can change petal counts or not.

Sometimes there are just oddball blooms. Regular use of hormone products can also cause bloom malformations.

Has this bloomed normally before? I got an out of bloom plant last year that recently started to bloom, and all the blooms so far have an extra part - I suspect this one may be a bit of an oddball plant :p

I also had some Miltonia blooms last year that had some blooms with missing or underdeveloped petals - this plant grows outside, and we had some unusually cold nights when the buds were developing, which I think was the cause (plant had all normal blooms previously) .

This is undoubtedly a mericlone and since thousands of clones were made of this cultivar, there is always a chance of a mutation, genetic or physical in forcing the blooms. Sometimes it occurs on only a few flowers; sometimes on all. This is generally not a symptom of virus.

If this is the first bloom for you, it occurs on all flowers and you have just purchased it, i would send it back to the vendor and ask for another plant.

Cym Ladye