Mimiature Orchids

[capemaycowboy]

About a year ago, my wife purchased two miniature orchids from a local grower. He just called them miniature orchids. They both have identification tags but they are blurred and very hard to read. The star shaped red bloom looks like Suph. cerua. The white spider bloom looks like Lept. bicolor. Do these orchids have a special miniature classification and is there anything else people can tell me about them.

[kip]

the first one is Cattleya cernua (formerly known as Sophronitis cernua)
the other one is Leptotes bicolor. both are in the Cattleya alliance. they look pretty healthy, so just keep up whatever you've been doing.

[kmarch]

I agree with kip on the IDs. Usually a positive ID of species orchids requires close comparison of all plant parts with a botanical description of the species, but there are some species that are very distinctive. Nothing else looks like them. Fortunately that is the case here.

"Miniature" is not an official classification. It generally refers to orchids that have small plant habits. I believe Rebecca Northen in her book on miniature orchids considers anything with a vegetative growth of less than 11 inches to be miniature. The term is relative though because even though an orchid may have mature growths that are tiny, it can spread out and form a large clump. For example Phrag xerophyticum is a small plant, maybe only about 5 inches high with a leaf span of maybe 5 or 6 inches yet I have seen large specimens, probably 40-50 growths spread out over and fulling in 24-inch saucers.

Your orchids look healthy and happy. Your Leptotes looks like it could be ready for a bigger mount. You dont' have to remove it form its current mount you can just wire the current plant an mount to a new, bigger mount and let it go. The plant will spread out over the new mount. Since it is growing well on the tree fern mount I'd recommend the new mount also be tree fern. Other than that my advice is the same as kip's: whatever it is you're doing, just keep doing that.

[lmartiny]

Well, some pros beat me to it. But I'm proud to say I was going to say the first is a Soph cernua, now known as a Catt. cernua. Learned that here. And something I've actaully retained. Didn't know the second one.

[capemaycowboy]

Thanks for all the compliments and advice but I have to tell you those pictures at the beginning were taken right after purchasing. You might be able to tell why I'm a novice with orchids after you see these current photos.
The little Suph. cernua seem to be about the same without the flower - The Lept. bicolor doesn't seem to be doing as well. But I'm hanging in there - Any advice wopuld be greatly appreciated - Thanks! Of and incidentally, as you can see, I finally figured out how to resize a digital photo

[kmarch]

Hmm, althouygh it appears that part of your Leptotes has died off, it looks like the rest of it has new growth and it looks generally healthy to me. I dont' think you have much cause for concern. The Leptotes is an intermediate grower, medium light levels - I've flowered it under ordinary fluorescent lights. You seem to be giving it enough water, the growths dont' look shriveled. Sometimes orchids will skip a flowering cycle when you bring them home. With the cattleya (it's no longe a sophronitis) you might consider giving it a bit more light. Other than that about all I can recommend is a little more patience.