How is this for flamboyance to cheer everyone up. Cattleya schroderae has enormous pale pink flowers with an orange/yellow disc on the lip and a particularly frilly look. I measured the flowers yesterday and the one at the front here was 25cm wide – wow! The species is another from Colombia, and it grows in warm lower montane forest. It is similar to another Colmcian Cattleya, Cattleya trianae (below) but has fewer larger flowers and different shaped pseudobulbs.

Cattleya schroderae flowers reliably during March and early April and is a regular at the London show. We call it the filly knickers cattleya which seems a little unfair on this grand species – what do you think?

We grow our plant in a basket of course bark,  hanging high in Warm Americas with the rest of our Cattleyas. This is another plant for dividing this month.