Plants are not necessarily selected for cloning based on plant vigor. It is usually a question of flower quality (and then they hope that the plants will grow).
Clones are usually plants of known high quality (IE flower quality).
Seedlings are a crapshoot. Some crosses produce 80% high quality flowers/20% inferior quality. Others produce 1 or 2 great plants, and the rest are garbage. The only clue available to the general public, is when a plant is used repeatedly for breeding, that is likely because it is a proven high quality parent.
Having said this, I buy 98% seedlings, but never less than 4 of each cross, and often as many as 10-12 seedlings. I bloom them out, and select the best one. I bought 10 of a new cross from Fred Clarke about 2 years ago, and so far I have tagged 5 of these plants as keepers (with 1 or 2 remaining as yet unbloomed).
One example of a poor clone, is Asconopsis Irene Dobkin (Phalaenopsis Doris x Ascocentrum miniatum). It is a truly spectacular flower, but:
The plant is messy (looks like a crows nest), as it throws leaves in every direction, instead of a neat alternating column like other Phalaenopsis and Vanda).
It is impossible to grow. I have personally killed 5
(despite my success with 75+ other vandaceous plants). I have no idea how this plant should be treated.
__________________
Kim (Fair Orchids)
Founder of SPCOP (Society to Prevention of Cruelty to Orchid People), with the goal of barring the taxonomists from tinkering with established genera!
I am neither a 'lumper' nor a 'splitter', but I refuse to re-write millions of labels.
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