Catasetum penang (ctsm pileatum x susan fuchs)

hi fellow catasetums fans, i had posted spike of this plant before but just thought to share some stories behind this plant. when i got this plant, it is at the end of the bloom but somehow all the bulbs just rotted together in less than a week. i manage to salvage on bulb, and from there i build up this plant.

now it has three bulbs, and for this round, it produces 8 blooms in a spike. UNFORTUNATELY, before the full bloom sets in, some insect had already ejected one of the pollina. and to make thing worst, while i was taking some photograph of this plant, it fell from the platform and another two pollen was ejected. it sustain minor bruises on the flowers but plant unharmed. such unfortunate event for this catasetum!  

hermaphrodite flowers

somewhere earlier in on of my post i had mentioned before about influence of lighting towards sex determination of catasetum flowers. here is one of my catasetum plant, the first spike if forming with two female flowers and before it blooms, i can see the emergence of the second spike. as always there is a shade house of mine where is would hang my catasetums plant during the hot spell of the months to get a male spike. here they would receive nothing more than 4 hours of sunlight but the area is bright enough.
during when i transferred this plant over, the female bud is just forming, and i had no idea that the reduction in lighting would have so much effect on the development.
in the pic you can see that this female had intense color and also formation of a unilateral trigger pollina; indicating it is a hermaphrodite flower. i did trigger the pollina but there were no pollen, it ejected out a stalk with the sticky substance as usual but without the pollen mass.

i insert a second similar pic pointing out the unilateral trigger pollina here for ease of viewing 

a final pic of a female bud (from another plant). you can see that the flower stalk are thick unlike those male flower that are thin. also here there is a darker green part of the bud which will later developed into the dome structure of the female flower. 

just some new update, tru hermaphrodite flowers that just flowered in my gardenn, from the frontal view, it looks like a male catasetum with the two trigger pollina, but from the side the large cap like structure of the female is truly visible. in addition to this, there are intense coloration of the labellum for these hermaphrodites.

the pic down below shows the large caplike structure, with the pair of trigger pollina as well 

frontal view showing the intense coloration of the labellum, without looking at the cap structure, one would easily mistaken this as a male flower

lateral view of the flower showing the prominent female characteristic of the flower

catasetum naso x catasetum jumbo pearl

this plant belongs to one of those few early hybrid on mine in the collection. from the characteristic of the spike and shape of flower, basically it had a strong genetic influence of the ctsm naso. the spike is upward, and the downward facing labellum with the nose like projection at the tip of the labellum.
the first spike is with 6 female flowers due to the hot weather a month plus ago. as the second spike was developing, i can see the fat flower stalk starts to form, indicating a female flower again. i then transfer the plant to a dimmer area, and luckily i got a male flower at the end of the spike. so three female flower and a male, but the male bloomed a week later after the female, mostly due to the energy of the plant is directed towards the formation of three seed pod that i had pollinated a week ago.
on this second spike there is three female flowers forming and i took the liberty to pollinate them with three different catasetums.
my first experiment with DIY media flasking still haven't show any signs of germination till now, so i think for these three pods, i think i gonna order some commercial media to try it out. anyone who is interested to try out commercial media for flasking, this is one link which i came across.
http://www.orchidseed.com/media/media.html
anyone who had success or tried different types of media whether it is commercial or DIY, please drop me a link, i would like to learn more about it.

second pic showing the swelling of the three ovaries after pollination, the male flower bloomed 5 days later after the female, mostly due to the energy is directed temporarily to the formation of the seed pod initially

 lateral image of the flower, here you can see the nose like projection from the labellum, showing strong influence of the naso blood line

spike that is erected upwards, characteristic again of the naso

the final pic here, showing the full bloom of the flower........................................................................

catasetum cristatum

compare to when it first initially came, this time it put out a more vigorous spike compare to before. the plant came with a poor rooting system initially, still putting up a spike but generally the plant is weak. this is especially true by the slightly wrinkled appearance of the lead bulb even though the media is moist, meaning the roots are not working at full function.
immediately after the spike blooms, i did not even wait for the bloom to whither, i snipped the spike and all the roots off. in less than two months, new growth appears and subsequently giving rise to this current spike with 11 flowers. this is still consider a baby plant, for they can grow up to really amazing specimens carrying more than 50 blooms per plant.
the presence of the barbed like structure on the lips gives the plant the name ctsm cristatum but in reality, there is a lot of other catasetum species that have similar barb like structure and some are even classified together in the catasetum barbatum complex. the barbatum complex and their look alike relatives is the one i had the most difficulty to differentiate. namely the ctsm gladiatorium, ctsm lanciferum, ctsm barbatum and the list goes on. they look ALIKE to me, but in the eyes of an expert they have their differences. perhaps in time i will learn about it but i am sure now is not the time.

pic taken on 24/11/2017. so far this plant is still producing spike with 12 flower counts per spike every round. still struggling to get the plant to a higher vigor state