Double column on Cattleya orchid

[jeffrey6115]

The other flowers are OK but this one.

[espranch]

Jeff, I think you may have a "co-joined" twin there! I would not try surgery, however; it's beautiful exactly the way it is! Betty :-)

[Cjcorner]

Would they call this peloric? I've never seen a malformed cattleya like this. I'd have bought it myself...too cool looking!

[cdayinflorida]

Yes, peloric. They do pop-up at times.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Hey a peloric cattleya. It is pretty though.

cheers,
BD

[Halloamey]

Cool Siamese twin you got there Jeff ! I have an interesting scientific side story for the people who are interested. This conjoined twins could be a result of an anomaly during the endoreduplication in the buds. Ok now for the big word LOL. Normally orchids have say diploid chromosomes (2n) i.e. two identical sets of chromosomes and genes in all the cells, but it has been observed in orchids that only the cells in bud undergo a duplication without a division leading to cells that have 4 copies instead of the normal two copies (4n) i.e they are tetraploids. Naturally this is responsible for generating more diversity and even though the genes are now in 4 copies the expression is maintained, may be in this flower somehow the expression contrl was lost and so the double genes gave rise to to a double flower.

[cdayinflorida]

Love the scientific side story!

[catttan]

Thanks Amey for the info. I read that foxgloves produce peloric forms when stressed. At the moment the extreme heat must have really stressed out my Blc Chunyeh #1 and it is producing flowers with double columns and conjoined columns on all the 3 flowers. It has never happened before. Hope it doesn't happen again or else.......

BTW Jeff I love the colour of your catt. Reminds me of Blc Deese.

[dkknyte]

absolutely stunning ......

[Michael Saar]

This flower is not really peloric. Without getting overly complicated (and exponentially increasing my chances of saying something wrong), a truly peloric orchid would be radially symmetric and have three lips and three columns or three petals and no lip. Peloria apparently can be either developmental or genetic. (The simple dictionary definition of peloria is "Unusual regularity in the form of a flower that is normally irregular.")