New Orchid: Rlc. (Port Royal Sound 'Big Red' x Chia Lin 'Shinsu #1' AM/JOGA

Rlc. (Port Royal Sound 'Big Red' x Chia Lin 'Shinsu #1' AM/JOGA)

     My giant orchid order from Hausermann arrived yesterday.  Since there are so many orchids (6), instead of one giant post, I will introduce each individually.

     So, without further ado, here is my new cattleya hybrid: a seed grown cross.  The tag says "Blc." for "brassolaeliocattleya" but a search on the Internet Orchid Register indicates that both parents were reassigned to the genus "rhyncholaeliocattleya" sometime around 2009.  Both these genus names are obscenely long, so I will refer to the orchid either as a 'cattleya' in general, or as 'Rlc'.

     The orchid has 4 single-leaved pseudobulbs.  The longest leaf is 5.5" and there is one new growth.  According to the vendor, it is 3 years away from blooming size.

Rlc. Chia Lin 'Shinsu #1' (source: Owensorchids.com)

Rlc. Port Royal Sound 'Big Red' (click for larger photo original link)

     The picture above are hits on google image search for the parent names. Both seem to make large showy red flowers.  I expect and hope that my resulting hybrid will come out looking similarly.   

Bare root Rlc. Port Royal Sound x Chia Lin

     Since the orchid looked like its roots were trying to crawl out of the pot, I immediately went to re-pot.  I soaked the orchid for a while in water+superthrive to loosen everything up.  Then I pried the whole thing out of its 2.5" pot.  The roots inside were better than I had expected, actually.  Compare my Tolumnia Genting Orange, which arrived similarly with tons of roots outside the pot: the roots from inside the pot were mostly dead.

     I trimmed back a few of the dead and broken roots, and repotted into a 4" clear plastic pot with medium orchid bark.