Catasetinae for identification Part 1 Catasetum

Starting just before Christmas, I have received pictures of an interesting assortment of flowers of the Catasetinae. The first on the list was the Mormodes colossa already discussed on my last blog of 2009 about Panamanian Mormodes. The next was a Catasetum from Mark Pendleton. Mark manages the boarding department of Brookside Orchids in California. He explained many plants show up in his department with no source data and this was one of those plants. This answered my first basic question when I receive a picture of an unidentified flower – the origin of the plant, including, if known, the country. The original pictures sent were female flowers. The female flowers of all Catasetum are so similar that it is nearly impossible to identify the flower from them. Catasetum, like the sister genus Cycnoches, are identified from the male flowers. After the original pictures of female flowers were received, fortunately the plant bloomed with male flowers and Mark sent this picture to me. I decided to take this opportunity to explain my methods of identifying flowers of Catasetum. The usual method to identify a flower of any orchid is to receive one or more flowers either dried or preserved in alcohol plus any pictures and information the owner has about the plant. In some cases it is possible to identify the flowers from pictures and information about the plant without actually examining a flower. Knowledge of the genus, research into the literature and pictures available are the tools to identify what one has. In this case it has been possible to identify the flower from the pictures without requesting a flower.

When identifying a Catasetum the first part of the flower I examine is the position of the antennae – the so-called “triggers” on the male column which, when touched, serve to expel the pollen onto the Euglossine bee that will deliver it to a female flower. Because the antennae are very sensitive, any touch will expel the pollen. The genus Catasetum is divided into two subgenera: Pseudocatasetum and Catasetum. Under the current rules of taxonomic nomenclature, if a genus is divided into parts, the part that contains the first species identified and on which the genus is based (the type species), always carries the generic name – in this case Catasetum. The type species of the genus is Catasetum macrocarpum and so the subgenus containing it is currently named Catasetum. The subgenus Pseudocatasetum contains only two to five species, depending on how the species are identified. The antennae of its male flowers are quite short, almost vestigial. The remainder of the some 160-180 species of the genus Catasetum are in the subgenus Catasetum.

The subgenus Catasetum is in turn divided into two sections based on the position of the antennae. Section Catasetum is based on the type species of genus, Catasetum macrocarpum. This section was originally named Anisoceras by the German taxonomist Mansfield for the asymmetric arrangement of the antennae as can be seen in this picture. These are also called “crossed” antennae. One antenna is straight and the other bent at a right angle either over or under the straight antenna. In addition to the type species, there are approximately 15 additional species and natural hybrids in the section. The second and by far largest section of the subgenus contains the remaining species of Catasetum. This is the section Isoceras consisting of the species with symmetrically arranged antennae such as shown here on Catasetum cristatum. This section has several subdivisions which I am not going to describe at this point. Anyone who is interested can contact me.

Now let’s look at the antennae of the flower sent by Mark. I have cropped the original picture to show a close-up of the lip, column and the antennae and I have also lightened the picture to show the detail of the lip. As can be seen, the antennae don’t match either of the two sections, asymmetric (crossed) or symmetric. This led me to think that this might be a hybrid between the two sections. Flowers of hybrids normally vary in their shapes between the parents. To see if this was true in this case, I asked Mark for pictures which would show additional male flowers to check for variation among them. Mark sent me a picture from the previous year flowering and as I suspected, the antennae in the flowers were all different. To me this confirmed that we were dealing with a hybrid and not a species. The question is what species? This frequently is an almost impossible task to determine the species parents of a hybrid. In this case however, I was fortunate that the shape of the inner edges of the lip was very distinctive. There are four species who have this type of lip, but the most commonly used in hybrids is Catasetum sanguineum. Also, as the name indicates, Ctsm. sanguineum has red markings on it as does this hybrid. Among Catasetum hybridizers, Catasetum sanguineum is known to be very dominate in its progeny, a feature that can mask the other parent. Because Catasetum sanguineum has symmetric antennae and as I had determined first, the hybrid shows it is a intersectional hybrid, this means that the other parent should come from the relatively small group of 15 species in the section Catasetum so now we have a better chance to identify the other parent. With the possibilities narrowed, I reviewed the registered hybrids of Catasetum sanguineum with parents from the section Anisoceras and found a picture in the AOS awards of Catasetum Jumbo Eagle ‘Linda Livesay’ HCC/AOS which very closely matches Mark’s flower. I felt comfortable identifying Mark’s flower as a clone of Catasetum Jumbo Eagle. There are several other awards to this hybrid of Catasetum sanguineum X Catasetum expansum. These awards plus Mark’s plant are an interesting study in the variability among different plants of the same parents.

I hope that the information has been of interest and helpful to anyone trying to identify one of their plants. I will continue this series next with a Mormodes from Venezuela.

Happy New Year - and now for something completely different as Monty Python would say

Although my special interest is the Catasetinae, among other species that are favorites is Cattleya walkeriana. So I was particularly interested in an article published in the Boletin CAOB (=Coordenadoria das Associacoes Orquidofilas do Brasil) No. 71, July-September 2008, 38-43 titled Cattleya walkeriana trilabelo by Alcides Cavasini Filho. I had noticed at least two other Cattleya species on Brazilian sales lists that had been labeled as "trilabelo" before I saw this article. I had never seen pictures of them so I just assumed they were heavily peloric forms such as those of Cattleya intermedia aquinii. It was especially amazing to see this article and its pictures (taken by Sr. Cavasini) of a Cattleya walkeriana which indeed possessed three complete lips instead of the normal two petals and one lip.

To the right is a picture taken of the 2009 blooming of the Cattleya walkeriana trilabelo 'Cavasini' showing the three completely formed lips and no petals.
Sr. Cavasini has given me permission to translate and publish his article in addition to the fine photographs which accompany it. I decided to publish a summary of the article and two of the pictures from him of this fascinating clone. Sr. Cavasini lives in Orlandia and his brother Andre Luis lives nearby in Guara, both in Sao Paulo state. The original plant was found near Catalao, Goias which is the Brazilian state at the heart of the Cattleya walkeriana habitat.

The article begins with a short history of the species, its discovery during a trip to Brazil 1817-1819 by Johann Emanuel Pohl and its rediscovery and subsequent publication in 1843 by George Gardner in the London Journal of Botany. The relationship to Cattleya bulbosa Lindley and Cattleya princeps Barbosa Rodrigues is explained with information on the habitat, plant, flowers and detailed instructions on the cultivation of Cattleya walkeriana. The history of the discovery of the trilabelo clone in 2002 by Sr. Figueroa Pires is related and the subsequent acquisition of the clone and its divisions in 2007 by Sr. Cavasini, his brother and brother-in-law Celio Dias Borges. They agreed to name the clone 'Cavasini'. The pictures which accompany the article were take on the second flowering of the clone in 2007. When I asked for permission for this blog, he sent me the picture above of the 2009 blooming. If anyone is interested in the complete translation, you may email me and I will send it to you with some additional pictures.

To the right is a picture from the article which shows one of the 2007 flowers forced open to show a better view of the three lips and the somewhat anomolous form of the column.

Cattleya walkeriana has a huge following and the ACW (Associacao Cattley walkeriana) and its affiliate in Japan, ACW Japan, hold shows for the species wth a special judging system developed by the ACW. We fans of the species are eagerly awaiting the publication of the new book by Lou C. Menezes, the Brazilian expert on the species. I understand the book should be published in mid-2010.