Cattleya doing something strange??
 

My Pot. Petitpetit Lucky is behaving very strange. I got it as a medium seedling last spring from Clouds. It was a nice healthy plant and I was pleasantly surprised to get two lovely blooms by Aug. on such a young plant. Cloud's told me several others had bloomed as well and they seemed to be real eager bloomers-suits me.

This winter it has been developing a new growth from the previous mature pseudo bulb just as many of my Catts are doing. It is several inches tall now. So I was surprised yesterday to see what looks like a bud trying to push its way thru what I thought was just one of the new bracts that form before the leaf grows. It seemed to be enclosed and a tiny crack had formed and it was trying to push thru. So I pulled it open a tiny bit more to help it get thru. I've never seen this before. I'm not 100% positive that its a bud-maybe it is a leaf all trapped and bent. But it looks like a bud. I've attached several pics that I took today. You can also see the previous mature pseudo bulb and how it grew a normal sheath and a spike from it last summer.

Has anyone else ever had this happen? It hasn't received a big dose of SuperThrive or anything like that and has been watered and fertilized the same as all the other orchids.

That is in fact a bud. I have a Cattleya doing something similar right now, buds coming through long before the leaf is mature, but yours is especially early with that bud. I don't know why they do this, probably hybrid vigor they need to release someplace. :)

Walkerianas and nobiliors bloom like that, but I've never heard of their complex crosses doing that. What is the background of this plant?

Edit: I should say, they bloom similar to that, but with a longer spike. Actually, now that I think about it, aclandiae blooms on immature growth as well, but look quite a bit different.

its a lead alright but the leaf and the sheath was overpowered by the buds (theres two of them) ....its as if it was exposed to bloom booster or hormones....I am curious about the color and form of the flowers; please post pics

It's quite a complex hybrid but it has 38% walkeriana in it. I had heard they bloom off the base of a mature pseudobulb but this is a new growth and the latest mature one already bloomed. I have never actually seen a walkeriana bloom tho, so maybe this is exactly how it would look.

These are a couple screen shots from OrchidWiz on its geneology.

I guess this makes up for some of the catts that grew sheaths and never bloomed :rofl:

Yes, I will be curious too. I re-potted it in July and always give the roots a quick little soak in some seaweed water and I do use a bit of bloom booster fert on my orchids rather than completely balanced MSU when I expect the blooms to be developing. But just small amounts. In winter I water quite sparsely and sometimes with plain rain water as they grow cool in the greenhouse and I figure they are resting a bit. Of course when there is new growth like this I don't totally starve it. I hope the bloom is the same as last time because I loved it.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I have a few cattleyas that some growths have one leaf while others have two. I always feel that they are a little confused.

They actually put out an entirely separate growth for flowering that is nearly identical to your growth. Its pretty neat. Like I said earlier though, the walkeriana will have a much longer flower spike coming from the growth though.

Sounds to me like the walkeriana influence is coming through.