Selfings of awarded cultivars?

[Fabian24]

It depends strongly on the specimen/cultivar.

Some give excellent quality offspring when selfed. Cattleya loddigesii 'Ademar Manarini' (found in nature) is an example. Many brazilian reports state that almost all of the selfings turn to inherit the quality of the parent plant.

Other plants, even if their quality is very good, are well known for their disastrous results when selfing or crossing with other plants. C. trianae 'Aranka Germaske' (FCC/AOS) is an example of this.

I also bought in the States a mericlone of C. percivaliana 'Summit', and I suspect it is a selfing. The lip is exactly like the original plant but the petals are not so wide. Maybe it was the same grower....

In most cases, a cross between two quality cultivars is not necessarily better than a selfing. It happened to me once to buy a cross of two beautiful C trianae clones, both with big and showy lips, and the flowers of the cross turned to have very wide petals but an extremely narrow labellum.

[SilverShaded]

Its probably for these reasons that the Royals were allowed to marry with a commoner for a change. Much of the aristocracy is completly bonkers these days, it really was time for an injection of fresh genes.