Astonishingly this is the 19th Cattleya species to appear in 365 days and there are still more species in bud! We didn’t realise we had such a lovely Cattleya collection.

Cattleya alaorii is one of the smaller growing species (previously included in Laelia) with large flowers for the size of the plant. The species is native to Brazil where it is found as an epiphyte in mossy primary forest between 200 and 600m altitude. Conditions here will be warm throughout the year and we find the species does best in our Warm Americas section (Min 15C) and mounted to suit the small buy scrambling habit of the plant. Although the habitat is reported as mossy we find that plants much prefer bare cork bark for the roots to attach to but we make a point of spraying plants daily to avoid them drying too much.