Essay about Variability inside Cattleya lueddemanniana.

[Jan Pahl]

Like in the rest of all unifoliate Cattleyas, ample color variability is possible to find inside the species, but that is true only on cultivation thanks to carefully selected rare wild collected cultivars, many of them unique, others only represented for no more than half a dozen initially wild collected plants. In fact on cultivation lueddemanniana have the same amount of segment color and lip patterns possibilities than any well known large Cattleya. But like in every other well known Large Cattleya, that is a complete different tale ruled more by genetic chance than from the true "behaviour" of the species.

Wild Cattleya lueddemanniana from the coastal region between north Caribbean facing slopes of the “Cordillera de la Costa” from North Aragua, Easten Vargas, Tacagua Valley (Capital district) and maybe some parts of Carabobo (at least north eastern Carabobo), are always very Light pink in color, normally the flowers open like “semialbas” just to gain some color with the days. Flower size is between medium to big, and lip patterns even if true complete solid lips are rare events tends to be solid, in fact the “average” lip phenotype is small to medium solid spots, the later but surrounded by “splinkle” tiny compact dots, or the later without the solid part.

Lueddemanniana from the coastal region thrives in small gallery forests (evergreen forest surrounded by rivers), semi-deciduous and deciduous forests, and also in xerophytic Thorny bushes. It can grow medium to small trees, but sometimes it can be found in cliffs. This coastal colonies grows between sea level all the way up to 900 meters over sea level and the flowering season can occur between July and January. This Biotype is the less represented biotype on cultivation except from “coerulea” clones that all of them comes from this area, also a good part of amethyst solid lip cultivars are from this area. Coastal lueddemanniana have the tendency to flowers twice a year, something That is much rare in “Larense” lueddemannianas.

Almost all lueddemannianas in cultivation and almost al color forms found on nature are from the “larense” type. Larense Lueddemannianas are possible to find from the north and north-east part of “Aroa” range (Yaracuy), all the way to dispersed from each other colonies in the North mountainous part of Lara province and few even more dispersed colonies at Falcón province. This biotype grows in average even more xerophitic than “coastal” lueddemannianas and can tolerate extreme temperatures in some places with more longer dry season, something that even if is true for many of the colonies, some of them grows in lets says “Moisture Mountainous Oasis”.

“Larense” type lueddemannianas vary a lot depending the colony, some colonies are very similar to “coastal” lueddemannianas in all aspects except that the frontal lip pattern tends to be more open at least in average. Other colonies are quite distinct, it tends to have more smaller flowers, with not so wide segments, more pronounced yellow eyes and more dark segments, but actually very dark lueddemannianas are only common on cultivation. Larense lueddemanniana grow between 400 to 900 meters over sea level and it flowers almost always just once per year between November-December all the way to March-April.