Cattleya José Martí 'Mother's Favorite'

[PeteM]

Cattleya Bob Betts × Cattleya Bow Bells

Acquired at an NCOS auction by a friend. I was gifted a division in 2016. This was repotted in March of 2022 in a net pot with grodan and #4 perlite. I’ve moved away from this mix for cattleyas and have returned to a kiwi bark base with less grodan. But this is the first time it has bloomed for me.

It does have a Hauserman tag with a #789. Looks like there is already lots of discussion (further details) in slippertalk about this plants clonal name.

I’m fond of the shape and ruffles, plan to keep this in the collection. Pics were taken in natural sunlight.

Enjoy.

 

[terryros]

Summarizing the confusion about this hybrid: Jose Marti was registered in 1959. ‘Fetzer’ was the only AOS awarded cultivar for decades. In 1990 a new hybrid was registered with RHS, Cattleya Mother’s Favourite, but this turned out to be a duplicate of Jose Martí. Then, in 2000 and 2001 Jose Martí ‘Mother’s Favorite’ (notice the spelling change of Favorite) received CCMs. It was a very strange choice of a cultivar name, given the already existing confusion between the hybrid names! I have to hope that all the Jose Martí ‘Mother’s Favorite’ plants were created from this original CCM (either divisions or meristems) and that we don’t have continued confusion from 1990!

 

[Happypaphy7]

Looks like a very large flower on a compact plant, or is it due to an angle?
I love big flowers on a compact plant, like Williette Wong 'The Best'.

 

[PeteM]

Looks like a very large flower on a compact plant, or is it due to an angle?
I love big flowers on a compact plant, like Williette Wong 'The Best'.

Seems compact compared to others, spacing between growths is reasonable and the growths so far have not been too long.. but I could also be growing it poorly. ‘The Best’ is also on my lists to keep an eye out for.

 

[monocotman]

Nice! Interesting flowering time as well, in June. Not many big whites flower now.

 

[PeteM]

Nice! Interesting flowering time as well, in June. Not many big whites flower now.

We experienced a very cool spring in our region. The grow room experienced a very sharp warm up in April, then another cooling period in May.



this might have triggered the fall bloomers. This is my second large white cattleya to bloom in the past week, Pearl Harbor is in bud and will bloom sometime within the next week. Our region experiences a cooler and wetter spring / summer during El Niño years. Maybe this is the cause.

Even though I grow in a basement under lights, I have a window cracked open and the orchids are exposed to the highs and lows. We had a great run through May with temps in the mid to high 60s (F) at night and mid 70s during the day. 68F @ night and 78F during the day are my target temps.

We are just now starting to warm up for the summer so these plants will be put through another round of confusing temperature oscillations. Should be interesting.

 

[southernbelle]

Pete, this is lovely. Also, what are you using that generates the temp/humidity graphs?

 

[PeteM]

Pete, this is lovely. Also, what are you using that generates the temp/humidity graphs?

it’s a called sensorpush it’s a little blue plastic square that you can setup in your room and it logs temps and humidity. Happy to help you navigate this if you dive in.

 

[DrLeslieEe]

it’s a called sensorpush it’s a little blue plastic square that you can setup in your room and it logs temps and humidity. Happy to help you navigate this if you dive in.

I have 6 of these blue square SensorPush units around my orchid area too. They are great to monitor when I’m travelling.

Here’s the one near my balcony door where my charlesworthiis and vietnamenses are to show the T and RH ranges:

 

[NEslipper]

Beautiful, must smell really nice too!

 

[terryros]

I am very grateful to Pete and Leslie for making me aware of the SensorPush devices. I now have two in my plant room. Easy to set up and the app works very nicely on my iPhone. This could be useful to sorting out growth and flowering issues with some plants.

 

[PeteM]

I returned from spring break vacation to find this bloomed out while I was away. Not a bad presentation for no effort in staking / spacing. Looks like she bloomed June of last year (2023), and now March of 2024. I like that interval. The past 4 years I’ve been experimenting with my cattleyas and put a few in grodan chunks in nested net baskets. This is one of them. I’m planning to repot this into Kiwi bark with an aircone pot to see if I can get that flower to improve in quality. I’m not completely satisfied with any of the straight grodan results so far in this genus. Stay tuned.

 

[Ricardo Boricua]

Had this plant. Floriferous and vigorous. It would produce roots prolifically, so much so that eventually I stopped using media and had it in an empty plastic pot. It grew on the inside of rim of the pot, on top and on the side. Sadly lost after the hurricanes. Hopefully in the future I will be able to replace it, it was a reliable bloomer.

 

[Linus_Cello]

Good flower to plant size ratio. Any crosses of this with similar large flower/small plant size (e.g., Nancy Off?) for windowsill growing?

 

[Ozpaph]

the deep yellow in the lip is very attractive

 

[PeteM]

Good flower to plant size ratio. Any crosses of this with similar large flower/small plant size (e.g., Nancy Off?) for windowsill growing?

The Cattleya Tiffin Bells 'Orchidglade', is one with a good flower to leaf ratio and large white flowers. Marc Levenson from NCOS has grown this in the past on the windowsill, not sure he has it anymore.

 

[terryros]

It is a very nice plant with outstanding parents – (Bob Betts x Bow Bells). It was registered in 1959, but I don't know on which side of the Atlantic Ocean. There may have been award activity in the RHS, but the first AOS award was an AM, then nothing.

In 1990, someone slipped up and the hybrid Cattleya Mother's Favourite (notice British spelling) was RHS registered with the parents (Bob Betts x Bow Bells). The mistake was corrected and Mother's Favourite now lists as a synonym for Jose Marti.

in 2000, Cattleya Jose Marti 'Mother's Favorite' (back to American spelling) received a CCM and this was repeated with a higher point total CCM in 2001, both to Roger L. West at the Amherst Orchid Society show in Massachusetts. I think this must be the plant that was cloned, perhaps more than once.

 

[DrLeslieEe]

The roots are growing away from the pot. Should be into pot. So looks like this method it doesn’t like as much?

 

[PeteM]

The roots are growing away from the pot. Should be into pot. So looks like this method it doesn’t like as much?

This is correct. Time to try again.

 

[southernbelle]

I am very grateful to Pete and Leslie for making me aware of the SensorPush devices. I now have two in my plant room. Easy to set up and the app works very nicely on my iPhone. This could be useful to sorting out growth and flowering issues with some plants.

So very much easier than logging temps/humidity manually, like we did for years!!