Is my cattleya preparing to flower?

attempting closeup pictures like this really make me want a better camera

    My original goal when buying all my orchids was that I may someday be able to always have at least one blooming at all times of the year.  However, in the 6 months that I've been growing them, I haven't yet had any blooms.  In part, many of my orchids are still in recovery mode.  The two oncidiums and the small phal are recovering from near death.  My paph sanderianum, cymbidium, and den victoria-reginae are still too small to flower.  And two of my orchids (the big phal and the paph) I bought in bloom last summer, and it is too soon for them to bloom again.

     After discounting the sick, the young, and the already-bloomed, I am left with two orchids which may be ready to bloom in then ear future.  One is my angraecum leonis.  The other is my slc 'scheherazade.'

     This cattleya's usual blooming season is in mid-February.  I bought this plant in its healthy adult form, with two flower sheaths on its newest pseudobulbs.  The flower sheaths are a sign that the pseudobulbs may bloom sometime in the future.  While one of the sheaths is completely empty, the other appears to have some new growth inside.  I tried to capture the shadow of that growth in the picture above; the triangle shaped silhouette at the point where the sheath emerges from the leaf and pseudobulb.

     The sheath on the other pseudobulb doesn't have anything like this.  Is that tiny shadow a promise of flowers in a month?  I don't know... but I'll be hoping and waiting.

Ctt Jewel Box "Scheherazade" AM/AOS (C aurantiaca x Lc Anzac)

     At this point, I was the owner of 9 orchid plants: 2 phalaenopsis, 2 oncidium, 2 paphiopedilum, 1 dendrobium, and 1 angraecoid.  Room under my lights was starting to run out.  I had representatives of most of the common orchid subtypes, but I had intentionally neglected the cattleyas.  The catts (also known as corsage orchids) have a very large following, but I just didn't see what the fuss was about.  All the orchid-selling websites seemed to have huge selections of cattleya hybrids, but none of the photographs of those blooms really impressed me.


     I changed my opinion on the catts after seeing a few specimens in person at the botanical garden in DC.  These blooms are often massive, overwhelming the plants.  What looked like messy crumpled flowers on the photographs, were large resplendent blooms in real life.  At that point I decided to give cattleya culture a try.  Enter the Slc 'Scheherazade.'


     I purchased this plant from the same vendor who sold me my den victoria reginae, and my paph sanderianum.  The vendor's nursery was local to New York, and both my previous plants from him had shipped in pristine condition.


     The orchid arrived with two flower sheaths.  Flower sheaths are simply leaf-life growths at the tops of pseudobulbs which indicate that the orchid may bloom from those pbulbs when in season.

sheath #1

sheath #2

     I haven't noticed any change in the plant over the last 2 months, except for one new root near the surface of the media.  However, if all goes well, I may be able to see flowers around February.  I will be monitoring the sheaths for any developments.  

Edit (2/23/12): I came to the understanding that due to taxonomical shakeups in the cattleya genus, the slc Jewel box has been renamed to cattlianthe (ctt) jewel box.  I will refer to the plant by its current name from now on.