Mini-Catts

The mini-cats are plants that will stay under 6” tall and bloom in a 3”-4” pot. It is not uncommon for mini-cats to bloom twice a year. Mini-cats are making a comeback, the modern breeding has developed surprisingly nice improvements where the plants are heat tolerant, produce large flowers, have brilliant colors and superb flower shape. Some of the excellent parents being used are: Pot. Rubescence, Sc. Beaufort, Slc. Tangerine Jewel, Sl. Minipet, and Slc. Pink Doll. There is always space for more of these in every collection. 

Compact Cattleyas

Compact growing Cattleyas have gained considerable interest with hobbyist for some important reasons.

• Plants will stay under 12” tall and bloom in 4”- 5” pots.
• They are space savings so with more plants per sq. ft. makes for more flowers per sq. ft.
• Flowers are appealing, with large size and wide range of colors.
• New hybrids are bred to carry the flowers well, on strong stems that don’t require staking.
• They grow well under a wide range of cultural conditions.
  

The proven breeding plants used in the development of compact Cattleyas are; Lc. Tokyo Magic, Blc. Love Sound, Pot. Rubescence, Lc. Mini Purple and Slc. Circle of Life. This parental stock will impart a strong growth habit and reliable blooming to their progeny.

The crosses listed below are the most modern breeding and will raise the bar for future hybrids. There are many outstanding hybrids here with great potential

Standard Cattleyas

These standard size Cattleyas will mature at 12” to 24” tall. They possess the similar growth habit of “Compact Cattleyas”, just taller. These are bred to have strong stems caring 5 or more flowers and will be very impressive when blooming at mature size. These make excellent display plants for orchid shows and most will bloom during the spring show season.

Spotted Cattleyas

Spotted flowers have been a favorite of mine for years. Seeing those wonderful spots in the heat of summer is a spectacular sight. Today the development of spotted breeding include flowers that bloom in colors ranging from cream, yellow, pink, orange, green, and bronze. They can be speckled, spotted and blotched. The use of C. Mark Jones has improved petal width and size. While the hybrids with Lc. Jungle Elf, Slc. Jungle Gem and Blc. SunCoast Sun Spots will add their yellow color to the flowers.

For this is the year we have made an extra effort towards hybrids with yellow flowers and red spots.  These are really a nice accomplishment for Cattleyas as this color combination is not s easy as it looks. These new spotted hybrids are bred to carry the flowers well, on strong stems, and have compact plant habit to bloom in 4”-5” pots.

Coerulea (blue) Cattleyas

In Cattleyas the ‘coerulea’ color or ‘blue’ as it is referred to is very intriguing and rare in nature. In the early years of blue breeding there were not many known species in this coerulea color, so breeding was limited to a few possibilities. Almost always the crosses were slow to mature and produced large plants due to the influence of the known blue species at the time. Today, we have many species and hybrids to breed with, and the quality of blue flowers has been improving rapidly. Plant habit and speed to bloom have also been addressed; we now have compact plants blooming in 4” pots

Species

Collecting select and awarded Cattleya species has been a passion of mine for many years. The collection is now over 700 plants! Recently, I started breeding the “best of the best” in an effort to have these choice and often hard to find Cattleya species available for the hobbyist. Here are some of the first things to come from the lab with many more to follow in coming years.