| Hybridizing
for Fragrance in Compact Cattleya Orchids
Fragrance is a bonus to the beautiful orchid flowers
in our collections. Often, the first hint of an orchid
in bloom is its perfume. We smell it before we see it.
Orchids produce flowers for reproduction. This is Mother
Nature's plan for the survival of species in the wild.
Fragrance is just one trick used to attract specific
pollinators. Bright colors and patterns, as well as
unique flower shapes that mimic insects, are sophisticated
techniques to attract attention.
Man is responsible for producing nearly all of the orchids
in our collections. Breeders have the ability to combine
orchids from every part of our earth to create orchids
impossible in nature. Orchidists mix orchids from every
latitute, altitude, season and climate all over the
world.
The goals in orchid breeding are simple but challenging.
Millions of hobbyists grow orchids in their homes in
windows or under artificial lights for most of the year.
More than one basement has been miraculously transformed
into a year-round orchid show. Truly amazing! These
limited spaces and lower humidity demand that breeders
create compact plants that bloom easily and frequently
and tolerate these less than ideal conditions. We also
want flowers with bright colors, long-lasting blooms,
good growth habits, and vigor. Adding fragrance to this
"ideal" orchid is an incredible task. It is
trial and error and it takes years to smell the results!
Mother Nature has rules, in other words obstacles, for
producing our "ideal" orchid.
Approximately 60% of orchids attract insects for pollination.
Fragrances attract specific insects before they can
see the flower. Bees like sweet and spicy. Flies are
attracted by - well, use your imagination. Moths are
active at night and pollinate Brassavola nodosa (Lady
of the Night) and Brassavola digbyana. Charles Darwin
predicted a moth was the pollinaotr of Angraecum sesquipedale,
a vandaceous species native to Madagascar. The nectar
is in a spur one foot long! Forty years later this moth
with a foot long proboscis was discovered. Who knew
that a moth could smell?
It seems a brightly colored flower without fragrance
could be easily hybridized with a sweet smelling orchid
with the result being a bright, perfumed orchid. If
only it were simple! Generally, we don't understand
how or why fragrance is transmitted. Sometimes the pollen
(male contributor) carries it. Other times it's carried
by the pod parent (female). Even after several generations,
not all offspring will be fragrant. The ones that are
fragrant do not have the same fragrance or the same
strength of fragrance.
One current technique is to first combine a compact
orchid of vibrant colors with a large, standard cattleya
hybrid with delicious fragrance. Then the best flower
with fragrance is selected and used in the breeding
program to produce a generation of "ideal"
orchids.
Hybridizing for fragrance in compact cattleya hybrids
is in its second generation. This means that breeders
are 12 to 15 years into the process of producing this
"ideal" orchid. Great progress is being made.
There are some compact cattleya hybrids now that are
fragrant, such as the one pictured at the top of this
article: Lc. Aloha Case 'Hawaiian Style". Many
more are on their way with perhaps the best yet to come!
For further reading, National Geographic, April 1971,
"The Exquisite Orchids." This article is a
must.
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