Mutated flower on my Phalaenopsis complex hybrid

[SillyKeiki]

Hello, fellow orchid enthusiasts!

Today I bring you a curiosity. An interesting case of a mutated flower.

This is one of my market-bought complex hybrid Phalaenopsis. On the first picture you can see how the normal flowers should look like:



And, on this second pic, you can see this year's first bloom:



Let's take a moment to analise this mutation. Regular Phalaenopsis flowers have:

- 3 sepals
- 3 petals, one of which is highly specialised and transformed into what we call labellum

This mutated flower has instead:

- 1 normal sepal, and the 2 lower sepals are fused together
- the labellum is missing completely
- the 2 remaining petals have inherited the treats of the labellum, but only half petal each, making them half-peloric. Please note they both have only half of the callus as well.

I am now very interested in flower development in orchids, because I also saw a case recently of a Paphiopedilum American Hybrid which had a split sinsepal (they normally have fused lower sepals). And my Phal got a mutation that did exactly this, so it must be a similar gene.

Can somebody recommend a good read on orchid flower development, specially the mechanisms of diferentiation and genetics?

[Ray]

Mutations happen, and are rarely repeated. If they are, the plant will often end up in the trash.

Split paph synsepals also occur from time to time - and then be back to normal on the next flowering.

I doubt there is ANY genetic info out there that will help you understand it better.

[Fairorchids]

A mutation is a shift (change), which is permanent and stable.

Some mutations are stable & permanent, but not necessarily compatible with different stable mutations.

Other mutations are semi-permanent. For example, a plant with peloric flowers might have 80% peloric and 20% non-peloric flowers on the same spike.

I purchased several seedlings of a speculative Cymbidium cross (100% petal peloric x 100% sepal peloric). Just bloomed the first plant, with all non-peloric flowers.

This means that while each peloric type is stable, the two types of peloric flowers are not compatible. Thus, they 'wipe each other out' in the offspring.

[SillyKeiki]

So... here are a few more pictures of the following flowers...

- right petal missing, left petal crumpled and wrinkly, lip almost normal:


- one lip and a half lip, double column (4 polinias):


- what is this even:


BTW, this is a picture of the plant. It looks as if the leaves spin the crown axis 90 degrees each new couple of leaves:

[neophyte]

That's really cool. My guess would be there are structures and hormones within the plant cells that influence cell division and development and there is a mutation that messes up the arrangement of leaves and flowers.