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walkeriana fragrance

17 years ago

Hi everyone,

My walkeriana tipo x puanani flowered for the first time recently and like Scott (gallery post recently), it smells pretty bad to me. Kind of like old perfume mixed with bad saliva smell. The flower is beautiful though and I will post a picture soon. I've read how some walkeriana smell wonderful. I was wondering if anyone here has bloomed this species and how you would describe the smell.

Thanks!

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Comments (4)

picotee_sofl
17 years ago
My walkeriana has no varietal name on the tag. It is a bright pink/lavender and the smell is sweet and delicious.

Marci
moomoos
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks Marci!
Guess I'll just have to wait and see if any of my other walkerianas open up with a nice fragrance.
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Not to rain on your parade but it also looks like a nobilior to me. An excerpt taken from Francisco Miranda's Taxonomy research on Nobiliors and Walkerianas: "An interesting feature about the flowers, and an important difference from Cattleya nobilior, is that when you look at the flowers from the side, the dorsal sepal is almost aligned with the column. In Cattleya nobilior, the column clearly sticks to the front in relation to the plane formed by the sepals and petals." F. Miranda's Comparison summary (see below): Cattleya nobilior Cattleya walkeriana Pseudobulbs with two leaves. Pseudobulbs typically with one leaf. Pink or magenta segments, depending on the population, with a wide whitish to yellowish area that covers most of the lip, this area with well-marked brownish veins that spread to most of the frontlobe. Magenta segments, lips with usually the same color but sometimes darker and usually with only a white or yellowish small blotch on the disk, to the front of where the column touches. Darker veining on lips is rare. Lip sidelobes well developed, loosely covering most of the column. Lip sidelobes small, loosely covering only around the base of the column. Column facing more to the front (*). Column facing more downwards (*). Spring blooming. Fall blooming.
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anglo
17 years ago
There are multiple components in flower fragrances. Some of them, in fact, are detectible by pollinators, but not by humans. And the pollinators are the targets. This why fragrances are what they are and why orchids expend the energy to emit them at times of day or night when the desired pollinators are active. Some orchids even fine tune the effort, emitting different scents at different times of the day.

The relative intensities of the various components we can detect in a complex fragrance are variable from flower to flower and from time to time. I have a walkeriana that bloomed in November. Along with the usual fragrance, there was a sort of sour smell. The same plant is in bloom again right now, and the sour component is not there. It has a spicy-perfumey scent that I think is very nice. My wife doesn't like it, though. To her nose, the fragrance is too strong.

Anyway, maybe a walkeriana has a logical reason for producing variable scents. Maybe environmental conditions at the time of blooming such as light, temperature, or humidity have something to do with it. If so (and I don't know that it is), maybe, the next time your walkeriana blooms, you'll like the fragrance better.
moomoos
Original Author
17 years ago
Nice to know that it does have the possibility of having a better scent next time. I did notice that the scent was really strong during the day. In the evening, it's much, much milder and even smells nice.

Thanks for the response anglo.

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