South Coast Orchid Society

Apart from an undated receipt for plants purchased from Robert Hanlon of Pacific Palisades, CA, including L. purpurata werkhauserii at $7.50 and L. purpurata carnea at $10.00, there is no indication in Kay's notes of where she obtained her purpuratas. However, she shared them with Jerry Kulaja and "Sarah", at least, and her notes of plants given or traded include a few named varieties (under various spellings, here corrected): L. purpurata werkhauseri 'Amethyst Beauty', L. purpurata werkhauseri "B. O. B." (=Ben O. Bracey), L. purpurata carnea 'Pink Dawn' HCC/AOS (Pacific South monthly judging, Los Angeles, CA, June 9, 1975, exhibited by Fred A. Stewart, Inc.). There is also a cultivar Kay labeled 'Magenta Lip' among the slides. She had at least two carnea cultivars.

The naming of purpurata varieties is problematic due to the use of descriptive "form" or de facto "Group" names that are often interpreted in the US as cultivar names. For the werkhauseri form, the situation is further complicated by the history of this form in Brazil, where the name was originally applied (without a valid botanical description) to two wild-collected (1902-1904) plants that remained, it is said, behind seven locks, until a division of the best one, designated werkhauseri superba, was sold in 1954. Whether all or any of the werkhauseri plants in circulation today can be verified as a division of one of the original plants, and not merely a plant with a deep coerulea-blue lip, is not known. The original werkhauseri plants had dusky purple-gray lips, sometimes described as "slate-gray". As the form names are currently used in Brazil, the authentic werkhauseri would seem to fall in the "ardósia" group — color ash-gray, "typical of the rock called slate" ("colorido cinza-chumbo típico da rocha denominada ardósia"). Adding to the abundance of names, an investigation by the RHS registrar of orchid hybrids in 2018 determined that the first publication of the name used the spelling werkhaeuserii, resulting in a suggestion that Werkhaeuseri might be used as a "Group name" under the rules for horticultural orchid names. See our blog entry, Cattleya purpurata, Brazilian Style.