Cattleya walkeriana 'Dayane Wenzel' HCC/AOS x 'SVO Whopper' AM/AOS

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Very, very pretty! Mine has yet to bloom. I "feel like" I'm doing things right but my timing must be off on the resting period. Will give it another year before I decide if it needs to go.

These are fragrant, correct?
 
Very nice flower!
My number one favorite species of all time.
Mr.Rotter, your issue could be this rest period. I know the literature claims that they need a drier winter rest which is not the same as a dry winter rest.
Less water is not no water.
I just ordered a large 20+ bulb plant of C. walkeriana and divided it upon arrival. I got two nice sized divisions plus two 2 bulb extras. Both of those little guys have put out new growth which are now forming leaves.
I am up to 14 plants of walkeriana and a few are putting out new growth. They are not resting. They might not bloom but they will produce a new bulb with roots to follow.
 
Great looking walkeriana!

So walkeriana is supposedly sensitive to day length. I didn't know that until recently but now I understand why my walkeriana plants (I have three different varieties) sometimes skipped a month or two before blooming. That means that light pollution at nigh might inhibit blooming.
 
First time blooming. Purchased a couple of years from Sunset Valley Orchids.
View attachment 50943
Very nice flower... looks like it might be a flamea.
Very, very pretty! Mine has yet to bloom. I "feel like" I'm doing things right but my timing must be off on the resting period. Will give it another year before I decide if it needs to go.

These are fragrant, correct?
I know there are some who have more walkeriana than I do but I have more than 130 clones and 100's of seedlings. I say this only because it's given me a lot to observe. I give them a rest from fertilizer Nov through February but I do not withhold water. When I gave them a dry period the bulbs shriveled and it took them longer to get going in the spring.. Many of them have 20-30 bulbs and most of them flower each year. I'm happy they don't all flower at the same time. It's nice to have them blooming over several months.
Great looking walkeriana!

So walkeriana is supposedly sensitive to day length. I didn't know that until recently but now I understand why my walkeriana plants (I have three different varieties) sometimes skipped a month or two before blooming. That means that light pollution at nigh might inhibit blooming.
My neighbor has a street light between our houses. It's like having a full moon year round and it hasn't seemed to effect any of my orchids flowering.
 
Last edited:
It is nicely fragrant. Subtle but there. By the way I the petal spread measures at 9cm. Don't know if that is large or not for a walkeiana but it sure looks big to me! I have several more of these all purchased from Fred but none of them are showing any signs of blooming. They were all seedlings when I got them so they are just now entering blooming size. I also have a couple of the white Pendentive variety one of which has a bud that is about to break open.

I do not give them any kind of break or resting period. They get 12 hours of light during the winter and 14 hours during the summer from LED lights. Watering is once a week. I do have a seedling heating pad under their growing area since they are growing in my basement where it stays on the cool side especially during the winter. I have the pad hooked into a sensor that is set to turn off at 80 degrees. The roots don't see that high of a temp of course but the pots do get warm to the touch. The pad is plugged into the same timer that controls the lights so the plants see a drop in temp at night.
 
Thanks for the cultural tips everyone! Nice to hear what others are doing that leads to success.

This winter, I tossed my walkeriana into the greenhouse that gets cold but not freezing. Last year I gave it a drier but not completely dry "rest" indoors over winter with shorter light intervals and got nothing. This year I figured I'd see if cooler temps and drier conditions might work, but now I may need to rethink that.

To be honest, I have a couple other Cattleya alliance species that refuse to bloom for me regardless of what I've tried over the years (ex: R. digbyana and B. gardneri), so I was basically giving these things a final winter to perform before they get evicted.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top