True species

[gonewild]

Well that pretty much runs down to about 1% of orchids in collections these days. What nature is left out there is not accessible to the taking like it was 100 years ago. So I guess I'd have to admit that I just keep species wannabe's.

Same is true about art. Do you want an original watercolor or a print? Both look equally well hanging on the wall. Heck with a print off the original you can increase the color saturation to make it more brilliant, more colorful. While you are at it why not double the size? It is still a print of the same original and still has everything the artist put into it and more.

I guess the line bred species are like prints of original artwork.
Whatever they are they are nice to have and worth enjoying.

 

[Rick]

Same is true about art. Do you want an original watercolor or a print? Both look equally well hanging on the wall. Heck with a print off the original you can increase the color saturation to make it more brilliant, more colorful. While you are at it why not double the size? It is still a print of the same original and still has everything the artist put into it and more.

I guess the line bred species are like prints of original artwork.
Whatever they are they are nice to have and worth enjoying.

I can work with this analogy.

1) prints are frequently produced by the original artist (or his minions) so that people of lesser means can enjoy the art, and to preserve the original intent of the original for large scale appreciation. (What if the original is stolen, lost, otherwise destroyed)?

2) you can only exaggerate a print of an original so much before even the masses get clued in to how different it is from the real thing.

3) Although you can infinitely increase the size of a print, line breeding is likely only to get you 20-30 percent increase over many generations.

Gotta leave for dinner, but look up the works by Curtis Bartone. http://curtisbartone.com/02statement.html This is great art (some pieces with orchids), and generally pertinent for this discussion. I saw his works on a recent trip to Savannah, GA. Check out this one! http://curtisbartone.com/01gallery208.html

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

Thanks Tom,as soon I will revive my HD memory from my old laptop,will add others...Unfortunately jannuary 2010 I lost 1000+ plants in a very bad combination of misfortunes..(colder night ever...rat eating electric cables...generator broken...me in china,my brother in India,my mother in hospital with my father and much more...) my bigger greenhous gone -10C°...
Luckily all my most important plants were in the other greenhouse(that gone to 0C° so plants got extremely damaged but not died...inside there,the big gigantea,sanderianum and some roths...),and in the indoor growing area so all safe.I lost mostly the progenyI produced and some important plants but few.I still crying sometime thinking at it...
After 1 year + plants starting recover and doing flasking from beginning...

Sorry to hear that man. That is a total bummer. I lost a big Platycerium superbum that I grew for 5 years to cold this winter. I'm not happy about that, but most everything else pulled through OK. The vagaries of life...:sob:

 

[poozcard]

Natural species evolution may be focused on leaf size or root length or some other "invisible" genetic trait that has given an individual plant within a species the ability to adapt and survive in an evolving environment.

I partially disagree.

I think the root/leaves size will not be focused by the pollinator (excluding human)

In my opinion, the evolution will focus mainly on the sexual function.
Those plants having the best attractive sexual organism will also have highest opportunity to get pollination successful.

Some other "invisible" genetic that I think may occur in this case is something involving with sexual function such as smell, taste, touch, hairs , etc.... but I do not think the roots or leaves are included.

The offsprings will have some charaters influenced by their papa and mama.
Of course it is not by intention of the pollinator to get those characters but it is because their parents won the roulette.

:rollhappy:

 

[poozcard]

I don't totally agree Lance. The vegetative parts of an orchid (or any other plant really) have little to do with its ability to reproduce sexually (although it will make a big difference of it's success for vegetative propagation). We have seen how much variation in what we call plant habit is out there in the wild for plants to survive. And I would agree that a lot of that variation in plant habit (basic plant physiology) is lost in line breeding of plants under GH conditions.


Sexual reproduction in orchids is not a random process by completely incoherent insects (unlike wind blown pollen for pine trees). Which is why we see all the fantastic diversity in orchid flowers. Unlike survival of an individual that depends on the quality of its vegetative success, the ability of that individual to pass its genes into another generation is dependent on its ability to attract a mate. Granted the insect is the go-between for two plants to sexually reproduce, but they are still attracted to these flowers for specific reasons, and the stronger the attractant stimuli the greater the chance of successful pollination. If there was no selection by pollinators how could we every get bucket orchids from pansies?

There is definitely a component of selection by the insects that pollinate orchids, but you are correct that there may be aspects of the flower that attract the bug that may be totally offensive to a human being. But I'm equally sure that insect pollinators could care less about the leaf quality of a flowering plant in the jungle when making its selection of flowers to pollinate.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say!

I'm not sure where the premise of this whole argument is trying to go.

Advocacy of hybridization? Keeping species pure?

There are some that say once the plant is removed from the wild it is no longer a species. So why not breed indiscriminately and just shut up and love the pretty flowers. Some people like to mix up all the food on their plate and eat a homogenous plate of food.

Some like to keep there "species" pure, and somewhere, draw the line (in a totally gray field) as to how far they will out cross or line breed to maintain a species "concept". Some people like to keep their vegies separate from their meat, and eat from separate selections on their plates.

Rather than arguing what is right or wrong maybe we should have a survey of preference for hybrids or species?

I totally agree with you in all texts above.
I also vote for a survey.

:clap::clap::clap::clap:

 

[poozcard]

Well that pretty much runs down to about 1% of orchids in collections these days. What nature is left out there is not accessible to the taking like it was 100 years ago. So I guess I'd have to admit that I just keep species wannabe's.

For species purity conservation, Sharp/Detailed definition of all variety including infraspecies/locality classification would very much help.

:clap::clap::clap:

 

[Roth]

It's way more complicated.

Take an extreme example:

Let's say you cross a ciliolare ( acid loving species) with a hangianum (limestone loving species). When you flask the progeny, you make the seed sowing at pH 5.5 or 6.8, with or without calcium, the seedlings that grow 'well' will not be the same in all cases... When you grow them in the nursery, if you do not use lime and grow the plants in fern roots, the plants that favors ciliolare for the acid-loving habit will grow well, the others sulk. If you grow them in limestone chips, the ciliolare-style will sulk, and the hangianum style will grow. Now we do not know anything about heredity, so it is possible that the genes are transmitted as a package, like lime adaptation and fragrance for hangianum.It is very simplistic and not accurate, but it's a concept that has been proven.

Now, with the complex hybrids, if you use a lot of lime, you will favor progeny that have certain traits, if you don't you will favor others seedlings. In both instances there will be very good growers, and very poor ones, but not the same plants.

As an example, with Lippewunder, plants from the original crosses perform very well in Taiwan and Japan. Gorgeous plants grown in Germany, that have been bred 2-3 generations further (Lippewunder x Lippewunder, and again and again), die quite quickly in both those countries, side by side with great clumps of original Lippewunder but are easy to grow for US people. As a fact, it is very difficult to grow vintage complexes and the latest generation of Lippewunder. The latter, through selection in another German nursery that grew them in a very different way from the original ones, flasking, and further line breeding, have very different nutrition and pH requirements. The f1-f2 Lippewunder can grow in pure sphag moss, the f4-f5 cannot. All are gorgeous plants if grown properly, but they cannot be grown together without specific adjustments for one or the other group...

That's what I call unwanted selection, and explains too why crosses with the same parents, done at different times, hence with different TC media and growing conditions afterwards, do not give the same result. The runts of each nursery are not the same for the same cross with the same cultivar.

It has been studied commercially with phals and with odonts. This explains too why the f2 f3 plants of many species perform 'better' than wild plants in cultivation, but this explains too that maybe we have lost a lot of potential, and growing oddities in cultivation in term of nutrient, light, temperatures requirements.

That's why I would agree with Guido that 'linebred' species or art propagated species, after a while are not 'species' anymore...

Add to that that maybe in the f4 f5 of some species, some people had added another species to make the result more attractive like many concolor, godefroyae, spicerianum, insigne, stonei, glaucophyllum, primulinum... that have a percentage of another species, but look like an improvement over the wild plants, or extinct plants like callosum 'Sanderae', lawrenceanum 'Hyeanum', curtisii 'Sanderae' that no longer exists and are represented by lookalike hybrids in cultivation today masquerading under the species names.

I know as a fact for having selfed and sibbed some godefroyae, lawrenceanum 'hyeanum' etc... that they are not species, but hybrids. For lawrenceanum and callosum it was easy, people selfed Maudiae 'Magnificum' and selected progeny looking like lawrenceanum or like callosum. Unfortunately, selfings of those plants will suddenly make a few progeny that is not 'right'. Like the callosum sanderae around in Japan. When selfed, suddenly there will be few plants with flat symmetrical dorsal, horizontal petals, and leaf mottling of lawrenceanum. Very few, but enough. Many leucochilum selfings and siblings from Thailand will suddenly throw out a few seedlings with heavily mottled, wide soft leaves typical of bellatulum. Eventually when bloomed they will have spots like a bellatulum. After many generations of 'breeding' if the species has been contaminated by another species in the early generations, it is not a species anymore, forever. That's why what we are doing in cultivation 'species propagation' is only for artistic purpose, but never for any 'conservation' purpose. We cannot guarantee species purity in cultivation, that's very clear...

 

[poozcard]

It's way more complicated.

Take an extreme example:

Let's say you cross a ciliolare ( acid loving species) with a hangianum (limestone loving species). When you flask the progeny, you make the seed sowing at pH 5.5 or 6.8, with or without calcium, the seedlings that grow 'well' will not be the same in all cases... When you grow them in the nursery, if you do not use lime and grow the plants in fern roots, the plants that favors ciliolare for the acid-loving habit will grow well, the others sulk. If you grow them in limestone chips, the ciliolare-style will sulk, and the hangianum style will grow. Now we do not know anything about heredity, so it is possible that the genes are transmitted as a package, like lime adaptation and fragrance for hangianum.It is very simplistic and not accurate, but it's a concept that has been proven.

Now, with the complex hybrids, if you use a lot of lime, you will favor progeny that have certain traits, if you don't you will favor others seedlings. In both instances there will be very good growers, and very poor ones, but not the same plants. That's what I call unwanted selection, and explains too why crosses with the same parent, done at different times, hence with different TC media and growing conditions afterwards, do not give the same result.

It has been studied commercially with phals and with odonts, and I am sure it applies to paphs. This explains too why the f2 f3 plants of many species perform 'better' than wild plants, but this explains too that maybe we have lost a lot of potential, and growing oddities in cultivation in term of nutrient, light, temperatures requirements.

That's why I would agree with Guido that 'linebred' species or art propagated species, after a while are not 'species' anymore...

Your argument is so strong to me.
I am convinced.

:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

 

[Rick]

Your argument is so strong to me.
I am convinced.

:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

So going back to the analogy of the of the artists print vs the genuine original drawing, is the print good enough to keep you from coveting the last of the originals in the wild? If your tastes are more inclined to all out fantasy plants why would you worry about prints vs originals when you could just make your own and be happy with them. How far are you willing to modify the print before it means nothing to you compared to the genuine article?

I posted a link to a drawing by Curtis Bartone that has a bucket orchid and I think a schombergia. It's going for $700 (probably equivalent to ~3 line bred BS sanderianum). Legal exports of collected sanderianum stopped years ago, so what few legal stud plants that still exist are way beyond my means.

But I don't expect sanderianum to last in the wild during my lifetime, so a "print" (cultured plant) is close enough to "possess" something I may never experience in person. But once I've seen the original, I would be diligent for things that don't match the picture, and even if the hybrid is beautiful, it doesn't have the same meaning and context of the species (line bred or not). When I see a species plant (even if its GH, line bred cultured), I relate to the ecosystem/ and evolution that created this plant form over millions of years. When I see a hybrid I can only relate to its superficial beauty that the hybridizer created maybe in the last year maybe as much as 100 years ago.

When I look at a species flower I see images of jungles and all its inner workings. When I look at a hybrid I think of cities, greenhouses, and mega grow-out facilities. Since I live surrounded in a jam packed human interventionist society already I personally can't get past the superficial beauty of a hybrid as anything meaningful.

 

[Rick]

Put in a context of human race relations try this.

How many African-, Chinese-, Philippine-, Mexican-, Italian-, German-, Greek-.....Americans consider themselves as "pure" Americans even though they are several generations away from their original homeland ancestry? Not many. Many are proud of their ethnic heritage, and I personally find the semblance of American cultural diversity very interesting.

Every one wants to be authentic even when the foods, climate, language ..... are nothing like what formed their original cultures in their countries of origin.

Yes there are conflicts over this too. Native Americans were put on reservations and children sent to boarding schools to loose their culture and become "Americans". Today we still have anti immigrant laws such as the "English only" laws.

Seems like there is always a tension between diversity and homogenization.

 

[poozcard]

Eventhough the thing is real there, but what we are trying to call it is not real.
It is what the Buddha said about Anatta.

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

 

[Rick]

I guess if we were all that enlightened we would not keep anything (especially orchids), not breed organisms to be slaves of our desires, stay out of the jungles except only to appreciate the beauty of life that is there on its own, and not convert the jungles to golf coarses, strip mines, palm oil plantations .......

This is a mindset not achieved by the vast majority of humanity (regardless of their professed spirituality).

My interpretation of the concept of Anatta is that ownership is false and subjugating any life to our will is false ( and not real, or produces happiness).

I think this would apply to any type of organism breeding, even for food.

I agree that if everyone was a Buddhist monk (or truly followed the teachings of Jesus) there would be a lot more undisturbed nature left on this planet.

 

[Braem]

These line bred species are what I like to call "hybrid species" These are man's vision of what the "prefect look" is for any given species not God's or nature's. Rick suggest, "you could stick it back out in the wild and its natural pollinators will go to it," For me, I think if the natural pollinator saw these monsters they'd be scared to death and fly or run the other way!

"A hybrid species" is a contradiction by itself ... it is like a "bicycle car" or a "female male". I wonder how much people want to crew up taxonomy ... and then complain about "taxonomy" being complicated.

 

[Ozpaph]

Well I didn't intend this to be my first post (without an introduction - that can wait) but I think many have missed the obvious and this is a very interesting thread.

Take Paph. delenatii as a perfect example of a species which has been line bred in captivity for probably 10-15 generations. For those not aware, briefly (and my interpretation) , it was brought back to France (2 plants I think) from Vietnam in the early 1900's. Vacerot and Lecoufle selfed/crossed the plants and for over 50 years EVERY delenatii in cultivation was from those plants. Generation after generation of very similar offspring. A very stable population of plants which became easier to grow as the generations past (as I've read). This is a great example of what would have happened to paph delenatii over hundreds of generations in the wild and effectively defines a species - a population of stable, similar, interbreeding individuals. There were no double size mutants, spotted flowers etc etc. We had to wait till 1993 when another colony of delenatii was discovered and now we have an alba form and a dark pouched form - variations on a theme and interbreedable with the common population of plants.

I dont think anyone in those 50 yrs of the lost delenatii would say "oh no that's a hybrid not a species'. And if you compare the line bred plants to the newly collected plants, guess what, they look much the same and interbreed. Hence my point about stability of a species. Yes, we can line breed for flowers that look better by judging criteria but they are still a species. Just like most of the paph roths in circulation.

'Dramatic' changes to the species only occur if chance polyploidy occurs or someone/something introduces genes from another species. To add some flavour, I suspect that 'species' that look similar (perhaps bullenianum and hookerae) have a common genetic heritage where a new colony has grown and become genetically separated from the 'old' and interbred to produce a new variant through natural selection (ie. 'evolution'). Cheers.

 

[paphioboy]

Hello OZpaph and welcome to the ST.. You bring up a valid point about the (in)ability to interbreed being a distinguishing characteristic for a species. That may be true for animals, but in plants (and orchids in particular), not only can plants from different species hybridize to produce fertile hybrids, but even between different genera.. But you wouldn't call them all the same species, right?

 

[Rick]

Ozpath

Your example of delenatii is right on point. I brought up the example of charlesworthii for the same reason, but also since we had a recent thread on line-bred vs natural on that species too.

I found some old illustrations from the late 1800's to early 1900's and in comparison to present day charlesworthii they are still recognizable as the species. Plant keys in taxonomic works list the flower dimensions of jungle collected flowers and even for charlesworthii, delenatii, and rothchildianum the cultured plants (with normal ploidy) produce flowers that are maybe only 20% bigger than the upper end of the range of wild plants.

So yes, they are at least facsimiles of the original wild species ancestor. And I don't see a problem with leaving a species label on them.

I will also agree that they have lost an unknown amount of their eco-context
when selected for growth in artificial culture. But the genes they have are what's left of the original set, nothing new added, so I don't see line breeding as a reason to change taxonomic status.

 

[poozcard]

I will also agree that they have lost an unknown amount of their eco-context
when selected for growth in artificial culture. But the genes they have are what's left of the original set, nothing new added, so I don't see line breeding as a reason to change taxonomic status.

Do you think that the eco is changed too?

Ecology of 2011 should be quite far from what it was in 18XX when they firstly found those paph.

If some of those Paphs which were collected those days still alive, you bring them to their eco, they may die almost immediately.

:rollhappy::rollhappy::rollhappy:

 

[Ozpaph]

Hello OZpaph and welcome to the ST.. You bring up a valid point about the (in)ability to interbreed being a distinguishing characteristic for a species. That may be true for animals, but in plants (and orchids in particular), not only can plants from different species hybridize to produce fertile hybrids, but even between different genera.. But you wouldn't call them all the same species, right?

The ability to breed outside the species only shows that they are genetically similar, not the same. Humans are all the same species but different races exist and are all interbreedable. I suppose the 'races' are varietals?? It is believed that homo sapiens did co-exist and 'interbreed' with other humaniods, different species, before homo sapiens predominated, but thats another story. Remember that taxonomy/classification is a man made construct designed to impose order on nature which is 'chaotic'. Also, within taxonomists we have so called 'lumpers' and 'splitters' - those that aggregate similar objects ( eg bouganvillianum and violascens)and those that further subdivide down to even 'purer' forms (eg the praestans complex -http://www.orchidspng.com/contrib_garay2.html) , making speciation a somewhat moving target.((forgive my examples if they are not the best but I think they illustrate the point)).

 

[Braem]

Well I didn't intend this to be my first post (without an introduction - that can wait) but I think many have missed the obvious and this is a very interesting thread.

Take Paph. delenatii as a perfect example of a species which has been line bred in captivity for probably 10-15 generations. For those not aware, briefly (and my interpretation) , it was brought back to France (2 plants I think) from Vietnam in the early 1900's. Vacerot and Lecoufle selfed/crossed the plants and for over 50 years EVERY delenatii in cultivation was from those plants. Generation after generation of very similar offspring. A very stable population of plants which became easier to grow as the generations past (as I've read). This is a great example of what would have happened to paph delenatii over hundreds of generations in the wild and effectively defines a species - a population of stable, similar, interbreeding individuals. There were no double size mutants, spotted flowers etc etc. We had to wait till 1993 when another colony of delenatii was discovered and now we have an alba form and a dark pouched form - variations on a theme and interbreedable with the common population of plants.

I dont think anyone in those 50 yrs of the lost delenatii would say "oh no that's a hybrid not a species'. And if you compare the line bred plants to the newly collected plants, guess what, they look much the same and interbreed. Hence my point about stability of a species. Yes, we can line breed for flowers that look better by judging criteria but they are still a species. Just like most of the paph roths in circulation.

'Dramatic' changes to the species only occur if chance polyploidy occurs or someone/something introduces genes from another species. To add some flavour, I suspect that 'species' that look similar (perhaps bullenianum and hookerae) have a common genetic heritage where a new colony has grown and become genetically separated from the 'old' and interbred to produce a new variant through natural selection (ie. 'evolution'). Cheers.

Of course line bred species are a species and as long as nothing else is crosed in ... it remains the species ... as soon as something else is crossed in, it is a hybrid. Thus, there is nothing difficult about that.

The same thing is to be said of charlesworthii or any species for that.

And if you take the overall "population" of those line breads .. you will find that the percentage of "larger flowers" (or whatever variation for that) will be exactly the same as in a wild growing population.

One last point ... "judging criteria" have nothing to do with taxonomy.

 

[Sirius]

"A hybrid species" is a contradiction by itself ... it is like a "bicycle car" or a "female male". I wonder how much people want to crew up taxonomy ... and then complain about "taxonomy" being complicated.

I think taxonomists have done a fine job of screwing up taxonomy all by themselves. We non-taxonomists just get caught in the crossfire, busily changing our plant labels every five minutes.