Crossing Similar Types. Is this a good thing or a big no no

[Kyle]

I side with leo. If everyone was honest it would be less of a problem, but people want plants to be one thing or another so bad, they change tags. Then you get amatures breeding with then. Or they get awarded.

I consider crossing alba/flava plants back to normal parents something different and acceptable.

As for vigor, you can select for that in flask over a couple of generations. Didn't Lance do that with Paph delenati before it was rediscovered.

Kyle

 

[bench72]

what is the limit of what can vs should not be crossed? e.g. with the lowii, at what angle of the petal stance do we say "oh those two shouldn't be crossed"?

also, if I have two plants labeled Paph philippinense where one has 5 cm petals is brown and flat not twisted and held at 45 degree angle, whilst another has 20cm petals but is a cascading red ribbon... can I cross those? or am I muddying the difference between var. phil vs var roeb? (assuming they are acceptable vars. and even if they aren't yet, maybe they might be tomorrow)

 

[truemadman]

On the for: increased vigor, the ability to combine favorable traits. Sometime a charming hybrid form of the species is the result. Often get very saleable pot plants.

On the Contra:
Many species afficiandos - including myself - I know for a fact that no matter how careful you are to keep plants of hybrid origin LABELLED as plants of hybrid origin. Once you sell a few dozen, sure enough there will be plants of your cross showing up here or there with no tags or with incorrect tags. In of itself - no problem.

But here is the kicker. A few years pass, and these unlabelled or mislabelled plants end up in the hands of a well intentioned species afficianado - and low and behold - it ends up being re-labelled as an example of the 'pure' species type, or worse yet, end up being described as a 'new' species. With the cochlopetalum Paphs, there are green-yellow with lighter yellow pouch line bred Paph Pinocchio being sold at ridiculous prices as glaucpphylum var album or victoria-regina album. I made Paph Salvado Dali (liemianum x chamberlainianum) about 10 years ago. I sold many seedlings over the years. I swear I am seeing them now on the sales tables and in shows and only one or 2 have the right name on them. Most are being shown and sold as one species or another.

You can't buy a 'pure' Paph godefroyae in the USA, almost all are to some degree hybrids with varying amounts of leucochilum in their ancestry.

I myself deliberately avoided crossing Phrag wallisii with warscewiczianum or caudatum in order to avoid having seedlings around that would end up in the trade incorrectly labelled down the road. Now when I go to buy a compact growing caudatum type originating from Guatemala or Panama, I no longer trust any source that has not collected their own (I know Jerry has collected a few - hopefully they have survived the years) and I no longer know what name to use with who to get the plant I want. (Sorry Sandy & Guido, while I agree, your name changes haven't caught uniformly).

So the above are my reasons that I often refrain from crossing 2 very similar species or varieties of the same species.

Lets face it Robert - I am sure you have seen your share of mislabelled & no labelled plants, and no matter how careful you are, odds are some (hopefully few) plants of every cross you make and sell will end up on the market without or with incorrect labels.

Just a fact of the business.
So that is why I and a many others cringe at the thought of crossing 2 similar varieties - its not that we don't like them - they are cute and wonderful as long as they stay labelled correctly. We even recognize they may be good sellers, better than the straight species, on the sales tables.

Cheers - Leo

What if those type specimen in situ were offspring of those reintroduced back to the wild by well intended people. There have been cases of reintroduction of certain species just because that particular species has not been seen in that location for last few years. How would we be so sure that they actually are the actual gen poll of that particular species?

For example, if we cross paph. concolor by paph. godefroyae, and cross that back to paph. concolor for say, another 3 to 4 times (generations)-- for the sage of improving, size, texture, and so on. How can one tell that apart from the actual paph. concolor. AND, What if those were the batch that get to be reintroduced.? Then, those plants were collected again and sold as…..

 

[Drorchid]

Thanks everyone for your points of view. I think this is turning out to be an interesting discussion. Leo, I can understand your points of view, and I have to agree with some of them. Also PaphMadMan makes some interesting points which I have to agree with.

A few things I have to add, even if you keep the species or the varieties "pure" over time they will look nothing like the original wild type, so intentially or unintentially we are creating "man-made" species. Think of the wild type Paph. bellatulum or Paph rothschildianum versus some of the most recent awarded plants. We select for larger, flatter, darker flowers. We select for the strongest growing plants that do well as a seedling in a "lab situation" (I do that myself I always replate the strongest and largest plants and throw away the weakest plants). I have noticed if we deal with a new species say besseae or kovachii, that the first generation seedlings have a much harder time growing in the lab than the say the third or fourth generation. By that time they grow like weeds, because they are adapted to the growing conditions in the lab. And then when they are growing in the greenhouse again we select for plants that do well in an artifical growing environment. Unintentially we keep throwing out the "wild type" plants, so say after 5 to 10 generations we may have selected plants that cannot even grow in the wild anymore.

Another point that I wanted to make is something I learned in my Plant Breeding Classes. And that is "Hybrid Vigor" or also known as "Heterosis". The following picture of corn shows what I am talking about:

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=Y7p&sa=N

Here is an easier explanation of Heterosis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis

Basically if you cross 2 populations or lines that have been inbred, the resulting hybrid has hybrid vigor, and the plants, flowers, fruit etc will be much larger than either parent. Hybrid vigor does not necessarily have to be between 2 different species, it also occurs within a species. But it does explain why usually the hybrid of 2 species say if you cross Phrag. fischeri onto Phrag. schlimii to make Phrag. Pink Panther, is much stronger and the flowers are bigger than either parent.

Someone brought up the species Laelia purpurata, It is true there are a lot of different strains or varieties like var carnea, var schusteriana, var russeliana, var ardosa etc. I agree I think it is good to keep crossing plants within the same variety to keep them pure. But I also think it is a good thing to cross the different types together. These plants have been selfed and sibbed for many generations, so you have some unintentional "inbred" lines, which have made these plants weaker, with smaller flowers, and probably less disease resistance. I have crossed some of these types together, and voila I got Hybrid Vigor. The plants are growing very strong (more so than the parents), and the flowers are larger than either parent. Also I get more Variation, and different flower colors pop up, which makes it more interesting for me as a breeder. Now I agree I can't call them var carnea or var shusteriana anymore, but they still will be Laelia purpurata's.

Now Leo brought up a point, and if someone else buys say one of these Laelia purpurata's and changes the tag by giving it a wrong variety name, because it looks like var. russeliana, but it has much larger flowers. That is their conscience and not mine. I have labeled mine correctly by saying it is Laelia purpurata (var russeliana x var. shusteriana).

Lastly I want to bring up one other reason for making crosses of similar species, is "curiosity", or as a geneticist I want to know the genetics of a plant. For instance Leo said he would never cross a Phrag. wallisii with a Phrag. caudatum. Well I have crossed Phrag. wallisii with Phrag. lindenii. I think both of them are very closely related, and I wanted to know how the characteristic of "Pouchlessness" gets inherited. Also I believe that lindenii, is just the "pouchless form" of wallisii, so my hypotheses is, if I cross the 2, that they will look identical to wallisii. Next I want to sib some of them to see if some will revert back to the lindenii type. I don't see anything wrong with that as a scientist, as long as I label them correctly, now if someone else takes one of these "hybrids" to a show and labels them incorrectly again that is their fault and not mine. If I show that the hybrid looks identical to Phrag. wallisii, maybe we will have to rethink the "species" concept, and call them the same species. In this case you don't have to worry about "labels" as the hybrid between the 2 will be the same species again. In many cases like this where it is hard to distinguish a hybrid between one of the parents (goes for dalesandroi/besseae/Jersey as well) I would consider myself a Lumper, and just call them all the same species, this will avoid any "labeling" issues as well, and this goes back to my first point that I made in my first post, is that "labeling" a plant is a man-made and artificial concept. Plants in nature are much more fluid than that.

Robert

 

[Drorchid]

What if those type specimen in situ were offspring of those reintroduced back to the wild by well intended people. There have been cases of reintroduction of certain species just because that particular species has not been seen in that location for last few years. How would we be so sure that they actually are the actual gen poll of that particular species?

For example, if we cross paph. concolor by paph. godefroyae, and cross that back to paph. concolor for say, another 3 to 4 times (generations)-- for the sage of improving, size, texture, and so on. How can one tell that apart from the actual paph. concolor. AND, What if those were the batch that get to be reintroduced.? Then, those plants were collected again and sold as…..

When you do breed for reintroduction into the wild, yes it is important to keep the species pure. You can do that by DNA fingerprinting, to make sure your original parents are pure.

But like I said earlier, even if the parents are pure (have no foreign DNA in them); you may have unintentionally selected for non "wild-type" characteristics, Maybe the natural pollinator won't even recognize or be able to pollinate the flowers, as the structure or the color of the flower has changed. So if I would be reintroducing in the wild, I would start out with "wild" collected specimens, cross them to make a larger population, and reintroduce those into the wild, rather than picking out plants that have been growing for 6 or 10 generations in a nursery environment. Even though they have the "correct" label, who knows what they exactly are.

Robert

 

[john mickel]

Species

Ok - Everyone had their point - heres mine - I go back to all the Orchid Digests I saved and saw and read all the articles written about original collectors as Ray Rands and Lance Birk - Thailand and their islands supported lots of original " species" Ok - But then I ask natural crosses were being made by nature and all collectors - said " Buy mine its a " natural -cross " Nature has been making its own - for-ever period - I feel its hard to say this is a pure and new found species etc etc - Who knows what went on those Ang Thong Cliffs 1000 years ago - I say argue your plant and love your results - We don't need to get political - " Every orchid is beautiful on its own " Grow em and love em - Bye John

 

[Drorchid]

I side with leo. If everyone was honest it would be less of a problem, but people want plants to be one thing or another so bad, they change tags. Then you get amatures breeding with then. Or they get awarded.

I consider crossing alba/flava plants back to normal parents something different and acceptable.

As for vigor, you can select for that in flask over a couple of generations. Didn't Lance do that with Paph delenati before it was rediscovered.

Kyle

Just because other people are dishonest and change labels, is not a reason for me not to make crosses between varieties of the same species, or between similar species. I am honest, and give the plants the right name. I can't help what people do with the plants down the road....

Regarding vigor, yes you can select for plants that have more vigor, even within an inbred line (and that is what corn breeders do when they create inbred lines), but the vigor will be far greater once you outcross the 2 inbred lines.

Robert

 

[Kyle]

Just because other people are dishonest and change labels, is not a reason for me not to make crosses between varieties of the same species, or between similar species. I am honest, and give the plants the right name.

I agree it is a bit of buyer beware. I know that a plant you you guys will be what its labled. But you look at all the mis-labled dalessandrois or popowii. I'm sure there are examples in paphs.

This happens sometimes in phal species as well. Phal maria comes to mind. Also phal amabilis and aphroditii. Maybe thats why I'm against it, not being able to find a source that I trust for phal aphroditii/amabilis.

If I were growing a population of plants to reintroduce into the wild. I would pollenate them at random. The other part of introducing plants to wild is you have to work with the available plants, even if they aren't the ideal plants. If you want to reintroduce roths back to a habitat that no longer supports them, it is possible that you only have plants that 4 or 5 generations removed from the wild, but with in the bell curve of offspring some should be compatible with the natural pollenators. Those will be the only flowers to be pollenated in the future and the species will shift back to looking how nature intended it to look over a few generations. Its not as cut and dry as that, but thats the general theory.

Kyle

Kyle

 

[SlipperFan]

... I would consider myself a Lumper, and just call them all the same species, this will avoid any "labeling" issues as well, and this goes back to my first point that I made in my first post, is that "labeling" a plant is a man-made and artificial concept. Plants in nature are much more fluid than that.

Robert

Are you making a case for calling everything, for instance, in the Cattleya family "Cattleya"? Didn't someone propose that recently? Or did I misunderstand?

 

[Heather]

In many cases like this where it is hard to distinguish a hybrid between one of the parents (goes for dalesandroi/besseae/Jersey as well) I would consider myself a Lumper, and just call them all the same species, this will avoid any "labeling" issues as well, and this goes back to my first point that I made in my first post, is that "labeling" a plant is a man-made and artificial concept. Plants in nature are much more fluid than that.

Robert

I really thought this comment summed up a lot of this side of the discussion, however, I tend to be a splitter! Argh! And I really don't regard besseae and dal. as the same species.

So, I asked Dennis D'alessandro what he thought about this today after he spoke to my society. Mostly I asked about the risk of "muddying the waters" - the issue of how do you know what you have, besseae, dal, or Jersey? He said plant habit, growth habit, bloom habit... but we have really seen that there is a huge amount of confusion, especially with regards to the flowers and for hobbyists, it is extremely confusing! Kyle, is that article out yet?? If hobbyists go and take those plants and cross them to something and don't actually know what they're doing and then try to sell the seedlings...it makes things very muddy in my opinion. And I still say that philippinense and the P. caudatum group are a mess that will never be sorted out.

However, I do agree, Robert, that in the interest of science, your wallisii/lindenii question is valid and should be investigated but perhaps NEVER sold. I would like to know - can you cross those two and get a lindenii type with no pouch and three petals that doesn't self pollinate so you get the lasting flower of wallisii without the pouch? That'd be cool.

 

[Drorchid]

Are you making a case for calling everything, for instance, in the Cattleya family "Cattleya"? Didn't someone propose that recently? Or did I misunderstand?

No, I was not thinking that broad, I was thinking more on the species level. For instance everything in the Paph. lowii complex (like Paph. richardianum and Pah. lynniae) to call it Paph. lowii, or lumping Phrag. besseae with Phrag. dalesandroi. I would be Okay to still call the different forms varieties to distinguish them from each other, but in this case when you cross the different forms of lowii together they still will be called Paph. lowii, but they just loose the variety name when it is a hybrid. In this case there will be no confusion in the future, if it looks like Paph. lowii, it is still called a Paph. lowii.

But talking about the Cattleya group, yes I would be a fan to lump a lot of the different genera into one "Large" Genus group and dividing what we call the different genera into sub-genera. As an example what we know as Laelia purpurata would be Cattleya subgenus Sophronitis purpurata (yes, the taxonomists now consider it to be a Sophronitis), but the hobby grower can just write Cattleya purpurata on his/her label. If we cross this with Cattleya subgenus Brassavola nodosa (or Cattleya nodosa), the resulting hybrid would be Cattleya Morning Glory (when it is a Hybrid you do not have to write a subgenus level).

In this case the Cattleya intergenerics will always be Cattleya ......, instead of having all these diferent intergeneric names like Rsc, Slc, Blc, etc etc. The Taxonomists keep changing those names anyway, so it will be a lot easier for the hoby-grower if they always stay Cattleya (and then the Taxonomists can just fight with each other, what the different taxa should be on the sub-genus level).

Robert

 

[bench72]

I like that idea of one big group like Cattleya... will remove on the horticultural level the need to remember so many of those intergeneric names...

 

[Roy]

No, I was not thinking that broad, I was thinking more on the species level. For instance everything in the Paph. lowii complex (like Paph. richardianum and Pah. lynniae) to call it Paph. lowii, or lumping Phrag. besseae with Phrag. dalesandroi. I would be Okay to still call the different forms varieties to distinguish them from each other, but in this case when you cross the different forms of lowii together they still will be called Paph. lowii, but they just loose the variety name when it is a hybrid. In this case there will be no confusion in the future, if it looks like Paph. lowii, it is still called a Paph. lowii

I agree with this and to make it even simpler, the different clones like richardianum, lynniae etc could be given statis as, for example P.venustum fma measuresianum. ( not alba ), fairrieanum fma bohlmannianum or lawrenceanum fma hyeanum with these names formerly registered or is this going too far ??

 

[bench72]

but... you know how every so often we ask... "so everyone, what do you think this one is?" and then someone says oooh that is blah blah var this and that... and then the problem's back again....

 

[Heather]

(Roy, I just edited your post to include a quotation so as not to confuse...hope that's okay!)

 

[Roy]

No probs Heather, thanks.

 

[Rick]

A few things I have to add, even if you keep the species or the varieties "pure" over time they will look nothing like the original wild type, so intentially or unintentially we are creating "man-made" species. Think of the wild type Paph. bellatulum or Paph rothschildianum versus some of the most recent awarded plants. We select for larger, flatter, darker flowers. We select for the strongest growing plants that do well as a seedling in a "lab situation" (I do that myself I always replate the strongest and largest plants and throw away the weakest plants). I have noticed if we deal with a new species say besseae or kovachii, that the first generation seedlings have a much harder time growing in the lab than the say the third or fourth generation. By that time they grow like weeds, because they are adapted to the growing conditions in the lab. And then when they are growing in the greenhouse again we select for plants that do well in an artificial growing environment. Unintentially we keep throwing out the "wild type" plants, so say after 5 to 10 generations we may have selected plants that cannot even grow in the wild anymore.
Robert

I also think we have a VERY narrow view of what we understand as the "true" wild type. When you see the mind boggling range of variation for many species documented by field experts such as L. Birk, L. Averyanov, and L. McCook, it makes it virtually impossible to definitively ID a flower by visual inspection outside of its habitat of origin without a genetic label following it. By the time we get plants from the collectors through the taxonomists and into the GH we only see a small % of the wild population variation potential, but we perceive that the flower we are looking at represents 100% of what the wild population is.

Without coming out with a fast and cheap way to genetically ID plants and account for actual population documentation I think its going to remain a free for all for breeders with breeders goals, and conservationists can only do their best to work with the documentation they can get hold of in lieu of directly obtaining their source plants from wild populations.

 

[Lance Birk]

Thanks for starting this discussion Robert, and for conducting the poll.

As an experienced collector, a splitter and a concerned species naturalist, I have considered all these expressed opinions, and more, over the past many years. I even crossed lookalike species together; Ray Rands and I once had a contest to see who could flower first, seedlings of P. haynaldianum x P. lowii. But that was back when we could get species from any jungle and we had no thoughts of collecting restrictions of any species plants.

Particularly after I finished my adventure book about my collecting experiences, I realized the true improbability of "going back" to visit habitat areas because so much of the political world has changed. Physical habitats have also changed. CITES regulations prohibit orchid collections by any but native collectors, and in developed countries we must rely (mostly) on nursery-raised plants for our collections. And this is where the problems begin.

The drive to see what a cross between two different plants will bring is a strong one. The desire to be "the first" is strong, too. The lack of sources to use for breeding is formidble as is the drive to "improve" the appearance of a species less well endowed than what we think could be better. They are valid arguments.

But to think there is any possibility of returning any species of plant into a native habitat is wishful thinking, naive at best. Heterosis is again, man-made selection. Well, what about "jungle vigor"? It used to be a declared goal, to grow a plant for 5 years and to be able to display it in as good or better condition than when it was imported. That was the real test of a good grower. Jungle plants came in with Mycorrhizae and I think it is what maintained their health, until they were killed off.

But with man-made selection we circumvent those mycos by visually selecting vigorous seedlings. Nothing wrong with that. That's why we have P. delenatii in flower for 20 bucks these days. And I have to disagree with the idea that those plants would not survive back in habitat. Who knows this? Anyone tried it, I mean, on a well-planned basis?

We, who are alive at this moment, have the opportunity to save species plants as they have existed in nature. I argue that this is a worthy goal. It's not easy finding orchids species which came from a jungle, but persistance and dedication is an invigorating exercise, ... with its own reward. Otherwise, it's Pandora's Box.

But then, like Darwin and Wallace so described, species change on a regular basis. It's what they do best.

I've written an article about this problem (unpublished as yet) where I call for naming all verifiably documented collected plants as such.

"The simplest method to ensure that a plant of a known species is correctly labeled as such, is to attach the word, “col.” to the specific names of all jungle-collected orchid plants at the time of collection. An example of this labeling would read: “Paphiopedilum leucochilum, col.” To this label could be added habitat data, etc., but such data is not important to the basic obligation of maintaining a proper identity. Understandably, laboratory propagated plants would be denied this designation, further protecting true species from contamination by inappropriate hybridization. The only other time the term, “col.” would be authorized for use on a plant label is when listing parentage of laboratory-produced plants. Ideally, an international plant registration center could issue a series of numbers to plant collectors, used to identify each collected plant. In reality, this bureaucracy will not work. "

All existing orchid plants minus the "col" designation will be presumed to be "non verifiable" species.

All this discussion is for dedicated people. We have no control over anyone who does not agree with the issue of keeping the lines pure, or over ones who simply get lazy and mis-label their plants. the reality is, we must each do what we think is right.

My own desire is to find what the genetic variabilities are for the largest number of Paphiopedilum species as is possible. Hope I can live a few more hundred years.

 

[Drorchid]

Thanks Lance for your input. I really like the idea of your labeling system of a plant that is known to be collected from the wild. I know we have a lot of plants that Jerry has collected (when it was still legal) that came directly from the wild. It would be nice to distinguish these from plants that have been bred for 5 or 6 generations. These plants will be very important in the future, if one wants to see what the "Jungle" type looks like, or maybe they can be important for breeding purposes, as they still possess important traits that have been bred out (unintentionally) of the "man-made" species. For instance a year ago, some employers were culling out plants here in the greenhouse, and almost threw out some "jungle collected" plants, because the flowers looked small or did not have good shape. Luckily that did not happen, but if they would have had a different label, that said Collected from the Wild or "Col" there would have never been the danger of those plants being thrown out.

Robert

 

[Mrs. Paph]

Interesting topic....a lot has already been discussed, and I'm in the 'it depends' category, but I think I'll just make a comment on the mentions of genotyping plants to decide what species they are. The same thing applies here as applies to morphology - as Robert said, species are artificial categories that scientists put plants into. They would still be artificial categories, but in the case of looking at the DNA level, someone would have to decide where the artificial line should be drawn - to say that genetic profile X will be considered the species type, and that plants that are X% and higher in similarity will also be considered that species. I feel that if the money and the man (and woman! ) power is there, that classification based on genetics would be better defined than by morphology alone, but it would still be artificial, and not the miraculous fix that some might imagine it would be. Ppl could Still change labels, and lie about the genetic screening, and you'd just have to have it done all over again for yourself to make sure. But you could actually make sure a plant was w/in published boundaries then, so maybe that's a positive thing to look forward to in the future. Because it isn't the crosses themselves that are the problem, it's confusion later, which I agree, the original breeder is Not responsible for if they labeled correctly.