Happypaphy7
Paphlover
In his FB page, he originally said 3 years and 10 months. Still impressive, but that's closer to 4 than 3.
I'd be happy either way.
What is the best roth cross?
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I'd be happy either way.
tnyr5
Well-Known Member
He bloomed the first of the cross almost a year earlier.
Camellkc
Well-Known Member
I think the best roths cross now is from Taiwan, which is the sibling cross of “big panda”. Many of them can produce more than 7 cm wide dorsal and 35 cm NS for the first bloom.
great looking plants!!
Roth
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No no, The first ones bloomed under 3 years on a 1 growth + 1-2 big new ones, I posted them individually last year, only 5. The entire batch without exception bloomed at 3 years and 10 months, but on plant 3-5 growths, clumps...In his FB page, he originally said 3 years and 10 months. Still impressive, but that's closer to 4 than 3.
I'd be happy either way.
Roth
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The problem with Taiwan is that a lot of of the Sunlight Sky Roths are passed as 'rothschildianum'... and they have indeed 7-8 cm dorsals, 35-40cm blooms. But they remain hybrids, not the true rothschildianum, after all.
I saw some Sunlight Sky Roths that were fully impossible to distinguish from a roth, except maybe 1-2 oddities, like the bending leaves ( stonei like) or a bit pinkish in a dark pouch....
Camellkc
Well-Known Member
I think a few of the Taiwan main overseas exporters to overseas may sell the “pretended roths” as roths to western countries, don’t know they are pretending to do so or by mistakes. However, local Paph cultivators and Hong Kong experienced Paph grower can always locate the right reliable sources to buy a pure roths in Taiwan, so it is not a major problem to us.
I have done a search for 'Big Panda' without any luck...
What are some of the Roth named hybrids?
Camellkc
Well-Known Member
There is no English name for the roths clone “Big Panda”. It is just translated laterally from its Chinese name “大熊貓”. The owner of it is Mr. “朱文彬” and you can search his Facebook profile by copying the owner’s name for searching. Inside his Facebook, there are some of his magnificent roths crossing (including big panda) to have a look.
Roger that!
Thanks!
Paphman910
Well-Known Member
Do you have proof of this?
tnyr5
Well-Known Member
Well, maybe they do. I've seen more than one picture of roths next to rulers, boasting that the bloom is 33+cm. Well, the cm side of the ruler says 33, but the inch side says 11, lol. That's a mighty special ruler.
Roth
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Indeed, it is all over Facebook photos.... Dozens of different plants bloomed. I can make a best of/worst of, the two in the greenhouse are New Horizon x Raptor ( at least hahahaha), the tag and the single flower is Black Diamond x Mt Millais...
Note well, the Black Diamond x Mt Millais has nearly identical flowers to New Horizon x Raptor... and none are from any pedigree parents, very obviously...
For a real Black Diamond x Mt Millais, search on Facebook rothschildianum 'Chyme', bloomed by the TON. It is slightly 'different'.
We see as well all the Raptor crosses as a total disaster, none so far blooming even remotely close to the parents. There are examples, more on the forum. It can be nice to find out some 'parent traits' to comfort oneself, like well, it has several flowers per spike, and a pouch so it looks like its parent. Or there can be the truth, after all...
I used the photos out of Facebook as examples, if their ownerS want me to remove them, (one is in this post actually...) just let me know!
Search in the photos on this forum Leo x New Horizon, or Giant Wings x Canadian Club, for some more photos as well, and see by yourself...
Well, bonus, add Black Diamond x Tarentula to this list... Looks like the others photos in this post, but nowhere near the parents, or seedlings bloomed in Japan.
https://www.slippertalk.com/threads/a-few-multis.52065/
If you need way more photos, no worries.
If you look at here:
https://www.tokyoorchidnursery.com/2016/05/16/roths-tarantula-の子供/#gsc.tab=0
You have REAL progeny with Rothschildianum Tarantula... As expected when the real parents are used, not only printed, the progeny has a lot of traits from the parents. And no, growing perfectly well to specimen size any of the roths I mentioned previously will not transform them magically to look like their supposed parents, not even in 50 years.
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Roth
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Actually I saw some awarded in Taiwan that were the hybrid, as rothschildianum.
This one
is identified as the hybrid, Sunlight Sky Roths, clear and clean.
It looks strangely like some of the massive DS 7-8 rothschildianums... that coincidentally appeared at the same time those hybrids started to bloom, but never,ever before.
There are a couple of photos, including a massive **** up by a Taiwanese breeder,where he took a photo of 'amazing rothschildianum'. He forgot to remove a few dozens Sunlight Sky Roths from the background, and it was clear that the rothschildianum to him were the one looking like roth, and the ones with dropping/arching petals were the Sunlight Sky Roths...
Roth
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That is weirdly normal, it is the Taiwanese inch
The Taiwan inch is usually counted as 3cm since ages, really. Even highly respected Phalaenopsis companies for the mass market use the TW Inch at 3.0cm...
The MAINLAND Chinese inch is usually around 3.3+cm...
tnyr5
Well-Known Member
Ah, interesting. I like learning new things. 
I will start this long post addressing the increasingly overt accusations that Orchid Inn has deliberately sold mislabeled seedlings of Paphiopedilum rothschildianum on a grand scale. I have known Sam for over 20 years, during which time I have grown out hundreds of his flasks. Now that Sam is retiring, I am in the process of taking several deliveries comprising a significant portion of his remaining stock- including Paph. rothschildianum, and so I have both a personal and financial interest in addressing this accusation, along with a strong desire to defend the reputation of a dear friend and great ambassador for Paphiopedilums. I regret to see I stand nearly alone in speaking up for him here.
I have accepted the challenge laid down in this thread and the other where rothschildianum is currently being discussed. I have gone to Facebook and registered with two of the largest Paph communities and conducted extensive searches of their content with search terms like “Orchid Inn”, “Sam” and ‘rothschildianum”.
There were a couple of posts on problems with authentic rothschildianum from Select Orchids (a commercial entity owned by the accuser) but they were not specific to OI as are some posts here. Beyond that I found nothing- not a single assertion of Orchid Inn selling misidentified or substandard plants. And so, I find no merit in the suggestions that FB is a place to find a large number of disgruntled OI customers. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
On the question of breeding and the notion several seem to support here that the majority- or more- of a population of seedlings should meet or exceed the quality of the parents, that is just not how it works in my broad experience- and rothschildianum in particular deserves a detailed discussion on this point.
When Jack and Val Tonkin made their landmark sib cross of ‘Borneo’ x ‘Charles Edward’ (aka ‘Charles E’) in the late 1970s, rothschildianum became widely available to the general public for the first time ever.
Per an AOS Bulletin Article published in January 1990, about 2,500 plants were produced, and, it was estimated at least 50% of the plants that had flowered were an improvement over the parents with regards to “flower quality, growth habit, and floriferousness.” The article further noted that Tonkin had 238 of the plants in bloom at the time and had received 28 quality awards so far on rothschildianum. Additionally, the article noted that there had been very few successful intraspecific crosses of rothschildianum to date, in part due to inbreeding and cited one particular cross where a first bloom seedling presented at an AOS show had flowered after 15 years on a two growth plant with one deformed blossom. [AOS Bulletin, January 1990, “Stop Buying Wild Collected Plants”, Griesbach, R.J.
Per OrchidPro, the Tonkins have a total of 31 AOS Awards for rothschildianum, including the original AM for “Borneo” and its CCM and later FCC upgrade. I found two awards that were granted subsequent to that 1990 article- so by the time of the article cited above, the Tonkins had received almost all of the awards they were going to get for that cross. There are in older records a number of unidentified exhibitors, so it is possible they had other awards my search did not capture. In terms of plant count- when I bought one in 1995, Val Tonkin told me she still had a “greenhouse full” and general rumor at the time was that there were still several hundred plants which had never flowered.
Point being, as of 1990 in the 30 years since rothschildianum was rediscovered, you had only one highly successful sibling cross known to the general public (I am not aware of others- but much goes on behind closed doors and always has) out of a great many failed attempts, and as of the 11th anniversary of that cross you had about 1% receiving quality awards, and I would estimate one half of the plants still having never flowered, with rapidly diminishing returns over time. Assuming my estimate is accurate- the over 50% success rate in improvements over the parents translates into over 25% of the total population, again assuming- and I think reasonably- rapidly diminishing returns on the back half of the population, much or most of which never flowered.
When you breed two plants, you are- hopefully- selecting plants that performed in the top 5% of the total population or have one or two specific features that are so amazing that you want to perpetuate them. By nature most of the resulting progeny will be lesser than their parents. This is how it works. If it is a good cross with parents that have proven compatible for the kind of results you want, then over time you expect the plants to be better on average if you do sib crosses of top examples- but a cross that generates a significant number of plants- such as Phal. Orchid World- which are a marked improvement over the parents is very rare.
And so yes, I expect that most rothschildianum seedlings are not going to be as good as their parents. And only a fraction will strongly take the best traits of their parents and become similarly awardable.
I have attached two scientific articles on rothschildianum to this message that are highly informative about the species itself and its fascinating history and habitat. The first – Ecology of Paphiopedilum rothschildianum – is a fascinating read I think all of you will enjoy immensely. It tells the remarkable tale of field research into rothschildianum’s habitat- a habitat that actually evolves as the plants age and ultimately provides for their demise. The article is relevant to this discussion for two reasons. First, it offers a plausible reason for there being 3 distinct and separate habitats for rothschildianum with very distinct gene pools and characteristics. Second, you will see a photo of a plant flowering in the wild with somewhat downswept petals- a phenomenon often blamed on some stonei in the parentage when present in cultivation (the Sunlight Sky Roth hybrid), when in fact it is a characteristic of some roths. I absolutely believe Sunlight Sky Roth has been sold as rothschildianum. But you can’t just see downswept petals and assume the plant is not rothschildianum.
The second article is highly technical, well beyond my means in many respects, but a good article on the study of rothschildianum genetics. I present it here to evidence the very real fact the three separate populations of rothschildianum documented in Kinabalu National Park (Sabah, Malaysia, Borneo) have very distinct gene pools that have developed largely in isolation. This explains the complication in identifying pure rothschildianum in cultivation because the populations even differ in the appearance of the leaves. And given the relatively short time rothschildianum has been in cultivation AND heavily intra-specifically bred, I imagine there are precious few people on the planet who have the hands-on and eyes-on knowledge to really begin to understand these things and make good identifications.
I think the 3 populations also could help explain why the performance of rothschildianum siblings has yielded more deformed and sub-par flowers with some crosses over time. Simply put- lacking a really detailed knowledge of the origins of all parents, it is hard to know the degree to which the 3 gene pools are being cross-bred versus 1 pool being overly dominant and creating more in-breeding difficulties. Outside of awarded progeny of Borneo x Charles E and a handful of collected plants, are there even any great breeding plants still in existence? Inbreeding is a real problem here.
Further complicating matters is the incredible dominance rothschildianum has over almost every other species it is crossed with. That makes it much easier to inject something else somewhere in a long breeding line and get the benefit of some much needed fresh genetics while leaving little trace of the deception. Sunlight Sky Roth is a great example.
@Roth – based on my knowledge of you and your experience, I believe you are one of those very few people who really does understand rothschildianum. Despite my rebuttals of some of your arguments above, which I thought on deeply- going through my own research files and records before responding- I do believe in your expertise.
My concern is that your very valid concern about fake rothschildianum and plants with mislabeled parentage might be getting extrapolated to a wider population of plants than is really the case for the reasons I note above- or at least to certain parties. I share your view that there are a significant number of fake roths out there.
A few years ago, someone asked me why I was only buying flasks of Paphs like rothschildianum to grow and sell instead of making my own crosses from my own stud plants.
My response was that I thought you might get one really cutting edge rothschildianum- the kind where a division would sell for $5,000 or more- once every 4-5 flasks. And even then, some sib crosses just don’t work out and there is not yet the history and systematic knowledge to make better selections for parental pairings. And so, in order to stay on the cutting edge and sell flasks for $200+ each and NBS seedlings for $150+ each, you really needed to bloom out 40-50 flasks worth of plants every year or spending $50-75K on a handful of the best current divisions from other breeders willing to sell them.
That is the reality I think – that while the progeny overall are better today, the number of really top flight plants and home-run sib crosses remains very small. And while there are a number of fake or over-stated plants in the market, the criteria by which many of them can be identified are also criteria that I think can apply to genuinely identified plants with accurately documented ancestors.
Respectfully submitted.
I have accepted the challenge laid down in this thread and the other where rothschildianum is currently being discussed. I have gone to Facebook and registered with two of the largest Paph communities and conducted extensive searches of their content with search terms like “Orchid Inn”, “Sam” and ‘rothschildianum”.
There were a couple of posts on problems with authentic rothschildianum from Select Orchids (a commercial entity owned by the accuser) but they were not specific to OI as are some posts here. Beyond that I found nothing- not a single assertion of Orchid Inn selling misidentified or substandard plants. And so, I find no merit in the suggestions that FB is a place to find a large number of disgruntled OI customers. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
On the question of breeding and the notion several seem to support here that the majority- or more- of a population of seedlings should meet or exceed the quality of the parents, that is just not how it works in my broad experience- and rothschildianum in particular deserves a detailed discussion on this point.
When Jack and Val Tonkin made their landmark sib cross of ‘Borneo’ x ‘Charles Edward’ (aka ‘Charles E’) in the late 1970s, rothschildianum became widely available to the general public for the first time ever.
Per an AOS Bulletin Article published in January 1990, about 2,500 plants were produced, and, it was estimated at least 50% of the plants that had flowered were an improvement over the parents with regards to “flower quality, growth habit, and floriferousness.” The article further noted that Tonkin had 238 of the plants in bloom at the time and had received 28 quality awards so far on rothschildianum. Additionally, the article noted that there had been very few successful intraspecific crosses of rothschildianum to date, in part due to inbreeding and cited one particular cross where a first bloom seedling presented at an AOS show had flowered after 15 years on a two growth plant with one deformed blossom. [AOS Bulletin, January 1990, “Stop Buying Wild Collected Plants”, Griesbach, R.J.
Per OrchidPro, the Tonkins have a total of 31 AOS Awards for rothschildianum, including the original AM for “Borneo” and its CCM and later FCC upgrade. I found two awards that were granted subsequent to that 1990 article- so by the time of the article cited above, the Tonkins had received almost all of the awards they were going to get for that cross. There are in older records a number of unidentified exhibitors, so it is possible they had other awards my search did not capture. In terms of plant count- when I bought one in 1995, Val Tonkin told me she still had a “greenhouse full” and general rumor at the time was that there were still several hundred plants which had never flowered.
Point being, as of 1990 in the 30 years since rothschildianum was rediscovered, you had only one highly successful sibling cross known to the general public (I am not aware of others- but much goes on behind closed doors and always has) out of a great many failed attempts, and as of the 11th anniversary of that cross you had about 1% receiving quality awards, and I would estimate one half of the plants still having never flowered, with rapidly diminishing returns over time. Assuming my estimate is accurate- the over 50% success rate in improvements over the parents translates into over 25% of the total population, again assuming- and I think reasonably- rapidly diminishing returns on the back half of the population, much or most of which never flowered.
When you breed two plants, you are- hopefully- selecting plants that performed in the top 5% of the total population or have one or two specific features that are so amazing that you want to perpetuate them. By nature most of the resulting progeny will be lesser than their parents. This is how it works. If it is a good cross with parents that have proven compatible for the kind of results you want, then over time you expect the plants to be better on average if you do sib crosses of top examples- but a cross that generates a significant number of plants- such as Phal. Orchid World- which are a marked improvement over the parents is very rare.
And so yes, I expect that most rothschildianum seedlings are not going to be as good as their parents. And only a fraction will strongly take the best traits of their parents and become similarly awardable.
I have attached two scientific articles on rothschildianum to this message that are highly informative about the species itself and its fascinating history and habitat. The first – Ecology of Paphiopedilum rothschildianum – is a fascinating read I think all of you will enjoy immensely. It tells the remarkable tale of field research into rothschildianum’s habitat- a habitat that actually evolves as the plants age and ultimately provides for their demise. The article is relevant to this discussion for two reasons. First, it offers a plausible reason for there being 3 distinct and separate habitats for rothschildianum with very distinct gene pools and characteristics. Second, you will see a photo of a plant flowering in the wild with somewhat downswept petals- a phenomenon often blamed on some stonei in the parentage when present in cultivation (the Sunlight Sky Roth hybrid), when in fact it is a characteristic of some roths. I absolutely believe Sunlight Sky Roth has been sold as rothschildianum. But you can’t just see downswept petals and assume the plant is not rothschildianum.
The second article is highly technical, well beyond my means in many respects, but a good article on the study of rothschildianum genetics. I present it here to evidence the very real fact the three separate populations of rothschildianum documented in Kinabalu National Park (Sabah, Malaysia, Borneo) have very distinct gene pools that have developed largely in isolation. This explains the complication in identifying pure rothschildianum in cultivation because the populations even differ in the appearance of the leaves. And given the relatively short time rothschildianum has been in cultivation AND heavily intra-specifically bred, I imagine there are precious few people on the planet who have the hands-on and eyes-on knowledge to really begin to understand these things and make good identifications.
I think the 3 populations also could help explain why the performance of rothschildianum siblings has yielded more deformed and sub-par flowers with some crosses over time. Simply put- lacking a really detailed knowledge of the origins of all parents, it is hard to know the degree to which the 3 gene pools are being cross-bred versus 1 pool being overly dominant and creating more in-breeding difficulties. Outside of awarded progeny of Borneo x Charles E and a handful of collected plants, are there even any great breeding plants still in existence? Inbreeding is a real problem here.
Further complicating matters is the incredible dominance rothschildianum has over almost every other species it is crossed with. That makes it much easier to inject something else somewhere in a long breeding line and get the benefit of some much needed fresh genetics while leaving little trace of the deception. Sunlight Sky Roth is a great example.
@Roth – based on my knowledge of you and your experience, I believe you are one of those very few people who really does understand rothschildianum. Despite my rebuttals of some of your arguments above, which I thought on deeply- going through my own research files and records before responding- I do believe in your expertise.
My concern is that your very valid concern about fake rothschildianum and plants with mislabeled parentage might be getting extrapolated to a wider population of plants than is really the case for the reasons I note above- or at least to certain parties. I share your view that there are a significant number of fake roths out there.
A few years ago, someone asked me why I was only buying flasks of Paphs like rothschildianum to grow and sell instead of making my own crosses from my own stud plants.
My response was that I thought you might get one really cutting edge rothschildianum- the kind where a division would sell for $5,000 or more- once every 4-5 flasks. And even then, some sib crosses just don’t work out and there is not yet the history and systematic knowledge to make better selections for parental pairings. And so, in order to stay on the cutting edge and sell flasks for $200+ each and NBS seedlings for $150+ each, you really needed to bloom out 40-50 flasks worth of plants every year or spending $50-75K on a handful of the best current divisions from other breeders willing to sell them.
That is the reality I think – that while the progeny overall are better today, the number of really top flight plants and home-run sib crosses remains very small. And while there are a number of fake or over-stated plants in the market, the criteria by which many of them can be identified are also criteria that I think can apply to genuinely identified plants with accurately documented ancestors.
Respectfully submitted.
The size of these 'roths' is amazing, but the flower counts are relatively poor - 3-4 blooms. The Graciano/Temperanillo roths have 6-7 blooms.
Can you tell me why adding stonei into the breeding chain increases the flower size so much? Its not a big flower, naturally. Thanks
Can you tell me why adding stonei into the breeding chain increases the flower size so much? Its not a big flower, naturally. Thanks
For what my opinion is worth I agree with aspects of both Xavier's and Tom's arguments. I think it is clear that for some roths crosses someone in the supply chain is being dishonest and that plants are blooming that are clearly not of the parentage given. Two of the New Horizon x Raptor Xavier used above are mine and they do not in any way resemble the parents, and from what I've seen shared here and on Facebook that seems to be the norm for this cross as well as World Cup x Raptor. Of course not every plant in a grex is going to surpass the parents and/or be awardable, but when NONE of the progeny are even a decent quality bloom by modern standards that is pretty damning.
That being said, I've been a long-time customer of Sam's, I have hundreds of Orchid Inn plants in my collection and was awarded an FCC on one (a Hsinying Anita) this year. Sam has never been anything but wonderful to me and I do not have any reason to believe that he has deliberately misrepresented plants. Unless someone could produce truly compelling evidence otherwise I believe that it is far more likely that one of his suppliers was at fault for any mislabeling. I have bloomed a fair number of OI roths this year, mostly Giant Wings crosses, the least of which far outclassed last year's NH x Raptor and I've been pleased with the overall level of quality. Sam's retirement is a huge loss to the Paph community and he is leaving some big shoes to be filled.
That being said, I've been a long-time customer of Sam's, I have hundreds of Orchid Inn plants in my collection and was awarded an FCC on one (a Hsinying Anita) this year. Sam has never been anything but wonderful to me and I do not have any reason to believe that he has deliberately misrepresented plants. Unless someone could produce truly compelling evidence otherwise I believe that it is far more likely that one of his suppliers was at fault for any mislabeling. I have bloomed a fair number of OI roths this year, mostly Giant Wings crosses, the least of which far outclassed last year's NH x Raptor and I've been pleased with the overall level of quality. Sam's retirement is a huge loss to the Paph community and he is leaving some big shoes to be filled.
Happypaphy7
Paphlover
I too have been happy with plants from OI.
And I'm with you, Tom on your logic.
And I'm with you, Tom on your logic.
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