Opening Dried Sheaths
 

I know some cattleyas regularly bloom from dried sheaths, but what about those that normally don't? Say a catt that has all green sheaths but only one that has dried but is showing buds. Do you open the sheath or let nature take it's course?

There appears to be some difference of opinion here. My experience has been dismal and may have led to other's having bad experiences. When mine have "gone south" I have lost the buds. But that's just my experience - for what it's worth.

I can't say I've had too many troubles with buds breaking out of the sheaths. I have had only 1 sheath that turn very sour and wished I had split or atlease poke a couple of small holes in it. It was holding on to alot of moisture. Anyways I did leave it on and lost the buds.

Not all sheaths hold on to that much moisture, So I guess it depends.

I read on another forum a few days back, about someone having 7 sheaths on her catt - she peeled away 7, count "7" layers of sheaths. And there were buds ;)

Not bad experiences Ross! Learning experiences! :biggrin:

If it looks like the buds won't emerge by themselves, I snip off the tip with sterile scissors, then peel the two halves back to expose the buds.

A couple of weeks ago I peeled of a yellow/drying sheath on my blc. Alma kee since I could see a tiny thing growing inside and I just had to see what it was - and I didn't know whether it bloomed from green or dry sheaths.. :)

It turned out ot be the begining of a bud forming, the pic is from that time :)
The bud has now developed fine but the plant has not developed an actual inflorecense - the bud is situated right above the pb!

Now I'm thinking that I might have caused this by removing the sheath and exposing the beginning bud to direct light, and thereby perhaps stopping the production of the inflorecense.
I don't know if this could be true at all - but it makes a little sense to me since light hitting the bud directly could be a natural sign for the plant that the inflorecense is long enough for the flower to be elevated above the pb's - what do you guys think?

Christian