Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various tropical American, mostly epiphytic orchids of the genus Cattleya, much hybridized and extensively cultivated for their showy, variously colored flowers.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun botany Any
plant of the genusCattleya , a species oforchid .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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At the May state dinner for Mexican President Felipe Calderón, prickly pear cactus showed up in vermeil wine coolers, and Dowling also tucked a few among the centerpieces of fuchsia roses and cattleya orchids.
The White House's new florist in chief is boldly creating blooms with a view 2010
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This cattleya ‘Scheherazade’ blooms at this time each year.
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It's a member of the cattleya family, and its flowers stay around for a good month, and get darker and darker orange over time.
03/11/2005 2005
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In trying to delete the spacing in the edit, I deleted the cattleya picture and am giving up on trying to fix this particular post.
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day December 15, 2007 « Fairegarden 2007
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This is an enormous yellow cattleya that is truly enormous.
05/13/2005 2005
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It's a cattleya-type orchid, and it's the first time I've ever been able to get a catt to bloom.
12/14/2007 2007
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Another hands-free option is to wear flowers in your hair: a halo of stephanotis or a splash of gardenias or cattleya orchids on your best side.
Weddings Valentine Style Diann Valentine 2006
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Besides that moment (that first evening on which they had “done a cattleya”) when she had told him that she was coming from the
Swann's Way 2003
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The blooms of freesia, narcissus, hyacinths, cattleya orchids, and miniature gardenias are often short-lived, but their sweet fragrance makes up for their early demise.
How To Avoid Housework PAULA JHUNG 1995
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The blooms of freesia, narcissus, hyacinths, cattleya orchids, and miniature gardenias are often short-lived, but their sweet fragrance makes up for their early demise.
How To Avoid Housework PAULA JHUNG 1995
knitandpurl commented on the word cattleya
"But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete surrender, whether from fear of offending her, or from reluctance to appear retrospectively to have lied, or perhaps because he lacked the audacity to formulate a more urgent requirement than this (which could always be repeated, since it had not annoyed her on the first occasion), he resorted to the same pretext on the following days. If she had cattleyas pinned to her bodice, he would say: 'It's most unfortunate; the cattleyas don't need tucking in this evening; they've not been disturbed as they were the other night. i think, though, that this one isn't quite straight. May I see if they have more scent than the others?' Or else, if she had none: 'Oh! no cattleyas this evening; then there's no chance of my indulging in my little rearrangements.'"
-- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 255 of the Vintage International paperback edition
January 15, 2008
vendingmachine commented on the word cattleya
Medium purple. This color comes from a kind of orchid named for William Cattley, a patron of botany whose enthusiasm for orchids helped fuel a British craze for the flowers in the 1700s. The most common form of one of Cattley's original orchids (the cattleya labiata) highlights the color cattleya.
A moderate purple that is redder and paler than heliotrope, bluer and paler than average amethyst, and paler and slightly bluer than manganese violet
June 22, 2015