Cattleya Flowers

Types of Flowers 

Cattleya: 

Cattleya is a genus of 113 species of orchids from Costa Rica to tropical South America. The genus was named in 1824 by John Lindley after Sir William Cattley who received and was the first to bloom a specimen of Cattleya labiata. William Swainson had discovered the new plant in Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1817 and shipped to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens for identification. Swainson requested that a few plants be later sent to Cattley, who was able to bloom one a full year before the plants in Glasgow. It would be another 70 years before they would be rediscovered in the wild because of a mixup in the assumed location of the plants. The genus is abbreviated C in trade journals. They are widely known for their large, showy flowers, and were used extensively in hybridization for the cut-flower trade until the 1980s when pot plants became more popular. This genus and the numerous hybrids come close, through their beauty, to the idealized picture we have of the orchids.The flowers of the hybrids can vary in size from 5 cm to 15 cm or more. They occur in all colors except true blue and black. The typical flower has three rather narrow sepals and three usually broader petals: two petals are similar to each other, and the third is the quite different conspicuous lip, featuring various markings and specks and an often frilly margin. At the base, the margins are folded into a tube. Each flower stalk originates from a pseudobulb. The number of flowers varies; it can be just one or two, or sometimes up to ten. 

Originally, the concept Cattleya included a requirement that the pollinarium contain only four pollinia. Starting some time after December, 2000, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) began re-organizing the generic boundaries with respect to hybrid registration. This has led to multiple senses of the term Cattleya, not only with respect to species, but also with respect to hybrids.