Not always beauty knocks at your door!!!
 

I love adding seedlings to my collection. It is rewarding in several ways: there's the challenge of leading the small plant to maturity, the excitement of the first flower, but most of all you can, and most likely will, end up with something different, something that only you have (in opposition to mericloned plants!), a plant with characteristic not easily found and so on. Of course, there's always the opposite risk, the risk of getting crippled plants, which cannot produce not even normal flowers.
Most of times we show the success and hide the failures, but I cannot save myself from this, because, at best, a poor flower shows my inability of correctly assess the parents involved, but even if I had done it right, there's always the imponderable! After all we're dealing with living beings and there's room for good variations as well as to bad ones.
Take a look at the Cattleyas bellow. I bought them as small seedlings. The first is a cross between a flamea and a broad petal clone. My expectation was to get flowers with broad and splashed petals. And that was the breeder's intention too! Well, the second photo shows it all! The flowers not even open (I have a second plant with the same characteristic).
Coincidence or not, the alba came from the same nursery. It is a peloric alba that simply refuses to open too!
Of course I am not complaining, this is part of the game and could not be any different:). I just wanted to post these two examples to show that sometimes beauty does not knock at your door and this is normal!

Hey Mauro -- I still think they are both beautiful! Why aren't the flowers opening all the way though? Maybe I misunderstood......
Katie :)

Katie, those plants have some kind of altered genetic instructions preventing them to open. Those petals would be good for Cleistes, but not for Cattleya intermedia:D.
Just to clear a little bit more, when I say they aren't beautiful I am referring to the beauty one would expect for a C. intermedia. I am ready to agree that they can have their own beauty, especially because beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, isn't it?:)

Thanks for sharing those Mauro. It does look odd for a Cattleya but I think especially the first one is quite pretty anyway.

Thanks for sharing Mauro! I too love to get seedlings and see what I come out with, good or bad. I still like them both though, especially the alba. I find pelorics really fascinating!

[QUOTE=Rosim_in_BR;250618]Katie, those plants have some kind of altered genetic instructions preventing them to open. Those petals would be good for Cleistes, but not for Cattleya intermedia:D.
Just to clear a little bit more, when I say they aren't beautiful I am referring to the beauty one would expect for a C. intermedia. I am ready to agree that they can have their own beauty, especially because beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, isn't it?:)[/QUOTE]

Thanks for sharing this with us Mauro. I 'see' what you mean & I agree that even 'inperfect' ones to the 'norm' can be absolutely beautiful at the same time.

so what do you do with them mauro? do you cull them and start fresh with new seedlings? how many seedlings of the same cross do you usually get to hopefully get something worthwhile?

Rosim. It's funny to see you trying to explain that the flowers may look pretty, but not for C. intermedia. I agree with you that it is not a successful cross for the breeder. We all come across these sometimes ... but, hopefully not too often.
I know you mentioned one parent with flames on the petals. Is it possible that this parent had v. aquinii in its background. Then it would not be unusual for the flowers to cup severely or not open fully.

For dounoharm. This type of result is very troublesome because the constriction of the petals, sepals and lip usually cause the early self-pollination of the flower. In such cases, the intermedia flowers last only a few days instead of the normal 4-6 weeks.

Yes, I don't keep them. New seedlings? Yes, always, but not from the same cross!!
I usually acquire three or four seedlings from crosses I expect good flowers. But, I often buy compots too. It all depends on the parents:)

Its good that you post the less desirable flowers too. I do what you said and tend to just not show the 'ugly' ones. Its good to see that everyone can swing and miss sometimes! What do you think it was about that particular breeder that caused these flowers? Was it just coincidence that different linages had the same deformities or do you think the breeder may be somehow at fault?