Different Flower same Influorescence

[Orchonubee]

There are two questions to this post. The first is why different flowers on the same influorescence? Male/female? This is the first time I have noticed this on one of my cats with multiple blossum. It has a very nice spicy fragrance. The fragrance is slightly different between the two different blossums.

Secondly, it is presently unidentified, and I will post it on the identification forum, but someone may recognize it here.

[Dorothy]

Seems like the lowest catt bloom is missing it's lip. It's not a different flower so much as it is just deformed

[quiltergal]

Yup, D is right. No lip! I had a Phal. equestris do that on one flower earlier in the year.

[DebsC]

For what it's worth, I agree, the lower flower is deformed rather than a different kind.

[Orchonubee]

Thanks for the comments. It's 3 to 0 in favor of deformity. Guess that settles it, and I reluctantly accept your conclusion. I still cant figure out how the entire lip could be missing, the column three times as long, and more narrow, and the anther about 1/3 the size of the other two. The fragrance is slightly different too.

There are still two more buds about to open on an other inflorescence, and I will see what they bring. To the uneducated, which includes me, it's a male and two females.

[Dorothy]

I am aware that Cycnoches and Catasetums have distinctly different male and female flowers. I am not aware that this is true of Cattleya ..

[cneos]

there is no distinction between 'male' and 'female' flowers in cattleya - the absence of the lip means only that this particular flower is deformed / missing parts.

[Orchidflowerchild]

Cattleyas are "perfect" flowers. This is to say that they possess all the potential parts/organs that a flower can (full set of sepals, full corrolla of petals, male and female reproductive organs). Mutation is not at all uncommon, with flowers, especially if conditions are unstable or extreme when the bud primordia are forming. I don't imagine this will be an issue that comes up often. For the most part, things tend to form correctly, as the drive to reproduce is strong.

-Cj

[Orchonubee]

I recently learned that I may have caused this deformity by dusting my orchids with an insecticide the past summer. Cygon was suggested as the culprit. I didn't use cygon, but I did use orthene (75%), which may have caused the deformity. Thanx to those that answered my question, I learned alot.

[Dorothy]

Toxic chemical deformation .. how interesting