Cycnoches loddigesii
I posted pics of this in bloom on 11th November ; 9 months later, here we are again on a new bulb.
Like catasetums, these Cycnoches have explosive pollinia ; touch the trigger and bang - they fire off. Just don't get your face in the way or worst of all your eye - or you need a good hospital ! This plant was knocked over whilst waiting to have its piccy taken, and one pollinia shot off and can be seen - on the single flower picture, sticking to what I suppose would be the stigmatic surface if this were a female flower ( it is a male flower) - these Catasetum types are mostly dioecious - meaning that a plant produces either all female flowers or all male flowers , depending on, so it is said, temperature at the time of bud formation ; this led to many species being described twice or more under different names . However the odd plant is found occasionally with both kinds of flowers ,and even with a third kind having both male and female parts in the same flower (hermaphrodite flowers) which of course is just what most other orchids do - have hermaphrodite flowers that is ; the confusion over names got sorted out when such unusual plants were found.
Personally I don't like the female flowers of any Catasetum I have ever seen -they are all alike ,just green lumpy things with no petals or sepals to speak of , so I'm happy that my conditions eem to produce only male flowers .
A curious comparison here - think of male peacocks ( sorry - females are called pea-hens) and many other birds where the males are all flash and show, and the females rather dowdy. So unlike humans - but I'd better shut up or I may get lynched.... that was a joke of course.
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