who is Winston Churchill's daddy?

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TyroneGenade

TyroneGenade

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Hi all,

For those Paph Winston Churchill fans out there, for the fun (!?) of it I did some data mining on the RHS site and compiled a pedigree (see below).

winston_churchill.jpg


It is very interesting to see just what has gone into this cross. The major parent is insigne but how much insigne is there to be seen in the cross (13 out of 37 parents)? Sadly, 5 of the parents are unknown.

tt4n
 
What is really interesting is how much of an effect that one dose of bellatulum has had. The large flat shape of the flower comes from that single bellatulum injection. All the other species give the plant a typical Paph shape (like insigne). Of course, the unknown parents may have had bellatulum influences...

It is also interesting to see how much red there is coming from the boxalli/villosum influence, and how much can be done with this influence by competent breeders.

I wonder, if starting with today's awarded line bred clones, what a remake of Winston Churchill would look like? Alas, because of the 5 unknown parents, this experiment could not be beformed.

tt4n
 
Interesting. Thanks for posting. Actually there are only 3 unknown species, Two unknowns from the parent Paph. Susan Dillion, and 1 unknown from the parent Paph. William Mostyn (This parent occurs 3 times in the ancestry).

Robert
 
If you did a similar analysis on most complex paphiopedilum, you would see the same pattern of species involvement. Most are predominantly insigne, spicerianum and villosum with other species such as bellatulum, boxallii, charlesworthii, fairrieanum included in usually small doses. The ratios are similar across all colors..........The exceptions being such plants as Paph Peony which is more strongly bellatulum.
 
In Paph. Winston Churchill's ancestry you don't see any Paph. charlesworthii, I wonder if one of the "unknown" species is charlesworthii.

Robert
 
I wonder whether any of the hybrids of unknown parentage are still in existence or whether there are any drawings/plates of them? Might offer a clue so that we could fill in the blanks on the family tree.
 
I could not find a picture of Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn, but I found a picture of Paph. Chloe (= Baron Schroder x Mrs. William Mostyn):

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~PAPHIO-IN-OKINAWA/kaiyouhaku2007paph9.htm#label3

Paph. Baron Schroder is also an old hybrid (fairrieanum x Oenanthum) made in 1896. It is 50% fairrieanum, 25% insigne, 12.5% villosum, and 12.5% barbatum.
This is just speculation, but when I look at the picture of Paph. Chloe, I see Paph. spicerianum in there (due to the stripe in the mid-vein of the petals and the dorsal). So I am speculating that Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn has at least Paph. spicerianum in it's background.

Robert
 
Oh, I just looked up Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn in wildcat, and it gives it's ancestry as Paph. Calypso x Paph. Leanaum, so it is 50% spicerianum, 25% boxalii, and 25% insigne. At least my speculation of above was correct! So the only unknown are the Parents of Paph. Susan Dillon.
Robert
 
Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn = Calypso (spicerianum x boxalii) x Leeanum (specerianum x insigne)?

RHS gave one parent in the Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn cross as boxalii... Someone is off the mark here, but at least both agree there is boxalii in there.

Now if only someone can find out who Susan Dillon was...
 
This is a nice feature of OrchidWiz, the genetic composition by percentage of the species used in the hybrid.
 

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Drorchid said:
Oh, I just looked up Paph. Mrs. William Mostyn in wildcat, and it gives it's ancestry as Paph. Calypso x Paph. Leanaum, so it is 50% spicerianum, 25% boxalii, and 25% insigne. At least my speculation of above was correct! So the only unknown are the Parents of Paph. Susan Dillon.
Robert
Click to expand...

OrchidWiz contains two listings for Mrs. William Mostyn. One is boxallii x unknown. The other, Paph. Calypso x Paph. Leanaum, is listed with a corrected name of Evelyn Ames (registered in 1900 by Ames). The Mrs. William Moystn (boxallii x) was registered in 1902 by Wellesley.

Mrs. William Moystn (boxallii x) shows 33 F1 offspring and 11,463 progeny. Evelyn Ames wasn't so lucky; 3 F1 offspring and 6 progeny.

Gary
 
Great research! I didn't know Winston Churchill's lineage goes back so far. Very interesting post.
 
Most likely Winston Churchill is nothing of that at all... We do not know what types of villosum were used to make the crosses, or the insigne. Second, WC are tetraploid, and we do not know if they occured through a chance triploid crossed onto a diploid, which would not be unheard of, or simply two tetraploids crossed together.

Many crosses have not been registered with the proper parentage in the early days, so maybe some of the ancestry is simply not correct at all by itself...


Last, the unknownn species are a bit of a mystery, because the general pattern of that cross cannot be explained by the known parents, as usual with the complex hybrids.
 
What's even more interesting is to see who still has some of the "stepping stones" in this hybrid. It's pretty much impossible to guess which clones of Leeanum and Nitens were used in this pedigree. I think it's very important to conserve older clones: I have Eridge AM/RHS, one of the parents, and J.M. Black AM/RHS, one of the grandparents, and Cyclops 'Westonbirt' and Goliath 'Westonbirt' (which are probably not the correct clones, since W.C. was made by Low, not Holford, and Low's Eridge would have been made with his own clone of Goliath); I wonder which other clones of the various hybrids were used. I wonder if anyone has Low's Hampden anymore, or even if it was ever recorded which clone of Hampden was used.

I think the general pattern of the cross can be explained by looking at the species components and adding a tremendous amount of selection by the grower for specific traits - red color, wide petals, nice spotted dorsal...we can find all of those components in the species, and amplify them by selective pressures.
 
Names

When I started on my path in breeding complex in 1962 many of the growers NEVER divulged the correct parentage of their plants.
I know that several of the VERY famous names from the Ratcliffe stable were untrue!!!
As an example Orchilla "Chilton" AM/GMM/RHS-FCC/AOS and Startler "Glace" AM?RHS were,I think from the same seed pod.
I knew most of the Golden Oldies from that era.......................great breeders........................but!!!
So, no IF we tried to remake most of the famous complex that came out of England.........................immpossible
Ah! well
 

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