Cattleya coccinea

[naoki]

This is the first bloom from the flask I got in March 2015 from Troy Meyers. It is his TN7593; 'MC6228' x 'MC6229'. I realized that it was pretty difficult to take photos of because it is so red and becomes flat.


Cattleya coccinea on Flickr


Cattleya coccinea on Flickr


Cattleya coccinea on Flickr


Cattleya coccinea on Flickr


Cattleya coccinea on Flickr

 

[Stone]

This one looks a bit suspicious to me. Possibly a soph hybrid back crossed to coccinea again?

And it's not a Cattleya :evil:

 

[troy]

Oh man!! That is great!!!!

 

[Guldal]

And it's not a Cattleya :evil:

Well, actually it is, botanically speaking, as the sophronitis have been transferred to cattleya oke:
(I won't get used to it, though. The same way my Sedirea japonica will remain exactly that for me, although it has been transferred to Phalaenopsis)

This one looks a bit suspicious to me. Possibly a soph hybrid back crossed to coccinea again?

Why do you think that? With the exact information Naoki has on the plants provenience, you have to be more specific than just stating your abstract suspicion! Why not N3 or N4?

 

[naoki]

Mike, interesting. I'm curious why it looks like a hybrid since you have seen many of plants in this group. I don't know to well about this group, but I can see that this one looks unnatural (i.e. one of those artificially selected) because of the wide sepals and petals. I wonder if this is a very mild form of pelorism; petals are wider because they are developing something similar to side lobes of the lip. Isn't C. walkeriana with extremely wide petals also similar to this case?

Unfortunately, Troy Meyers' site doesn't have any information about the parents (other than it was outcrossed), or who made the cross.

 

[naoki]

For the genus name, I've read a couple of van den Berg et al's works, and I do have a mixed feeling about lumping, too. They have only 2 genes, and there are conflicts in the phylogenies between the two genes (probably due to ancient hybridization). It isn't that difficult to look at more regions in this genomic era. But instead of getting more data, lumping them into Cattleya is a safe, but lazy way.

One of the argument against dividing is that they need to create many genera, and it would be messy with nothogenera in horticulture. I personally (and scientifically) don't care about those artificial hybrids.

The other argument was that the nomenclature is stable even though we get new information to understand the relationships within Cattleya as a big group. They can simply update the subgenus affiliation without changing the binomial names. This is kind of true. My current thinking is that we will be happier with the easier and lazier solution (Cattleya as a larger group) in a long run because of the stability. So it is not great to lose the nice, distinctive grouping like Sophronitis from the species name, but it can be used as a subgenus/section/series classification.

 

[TrueNorth]

Beauty!! That's the reddest red that I've ever seen.

 

[Stone]

Why do you think that? With the exact information Naoki has on the plants provenience, you have to be more specific than just stating your abstract suspicion! Why not N3 or N4?

Well I didn't say IS a hybrid, I said it looks suspicious. I have never seen side lobes of the lip flaring out, (more obvious in the second pic) including in 4n plants. (that does not mean it cannot happen). The general look of the flower especially in the last picture ''looks'' more like a hybrid than the species to me.
Numbers and letters after a name don't mean much unless you can use them to accurately trace the parentage all the way back to the wild plant. Which in most cases you can't.

 

[Erythrone]

Well I didn't say IS a hybrid, I said it looks suspicious. I have never seen side lobes of the lip flaring out, (more obvious in the second pic) including in 4n plants. (that does not mean it cannot happen). The general look of the flower especially in the last picture ''looks'' more like a hybrid than the species to me.
Numbers and letters after a name don't mean much unless you can use them to accurately trace the parentage all the way back to the wild plant. Which in most cases you can't.

I agree it looks suspicious. Beautiful anyway!!

 

[naoki]

Thanks, Mike. I can see that it is slightly flared out than typical photos. But there appear to be some with slight flare. These which are labeled as C. coccinea could be not pure.

http://www.delfinadearaujo.com/on/on37/genero_sopronitis/Sophronitispage1_eng.htm (the second one)
https://marlowsorchids.com/inc/sdetail/8225/9637/

I agree that the lineage information get lost easily in orchids. It is unfortunate. I was reading a paper about population genetics/phylogeny of C. coccinea / C. mantiqueirae group. The morphology-based distinction of the species (mostly based on Fowlie's work) seems to be problematic. Also, an Eastern population of "C. coccinea" was actually more closely related to C. brevipedunculata/wittigiana clade. They mention that there are some morphological indication that this population is different from typical C. coccinea, but in some cases, it appears to be quite difficult to identify in nature (and in cultivation) due to variation within species and phenotypic plasticity. If the origin of the plants are known, it would help.

The shape of the lip would be fairly important for the pollination, but I also wonder with strong artificial selection, the shape could be screwed up (since there is not natural selection trying to maintain the functionality of the lip shape)?

But thank you very much for pointing out the difference! It will be interesting to see the other siblings.

 

[cnycharles]

Explosive color!


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[NYEric]

Cute. Interesting that you grow it mounted. I can't grow Catts so...
Thanks for sharing.