what do they mean by "clone"

[IngieBee]

On ebay, I see named orchids for sale where they say it is a "clone". Now a clone means the exact DNA, but for that, you'd need a cutting, no? So what do these people mean by "clone" ? Thanks

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Cloning plants have been a thing for decades. Yes, they are genetically identical to each other. It is done by laboratory process. It is too much to talk about here and now. I also currently do not have that much time on my hands to write that answer out in detail - (you know, school and such).

Look up:

1. cloning orchids
2. meristematic tissue

[IngieBee]

It must be cost efficient then, because they aren't expensive, wow, thanks!

OK, I read up on it and all of those methods are considered cloning, keikis, divisions, tissue samples grown in a lab. It just sounded weird

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by IngieBee

It must be cost efficient then, because they aren't expensive, wow, thanks!

Yes, it kind of is...

The cost in the materials and equipment to perform the procedures can get expensive. It is usually somewhat difficult to clone orchids at home using home cooking utensils in place of lab grade equipment.

The bottles they are cloned in must be sterile, so the environment you work around must also be sterile, disinfected, or sanitized. Not only this, but it helps to have something that rotates the bottles with the cloned tissue in there. This is where the lab grade equipment comes in.

When the orchids are cloned, they are cloned by the thousands. This is why those Phals at Lowe's or The Home Depot are so cheap.

Originally Posted by IngieBee

OK, I read up on it and all of those methods are considered cloning, keikis, divisions, tissue samples grown in a lab.

Divisions are not technically the same as cloning. I usually don't like to call divisions clones. Although, if the divisions were made from plants that were cloned, then, yeah, I would consider them to be clones.

Neither would I consider a keiki a clone. They may be genetically the same as the parent plant through asexual reproduction, but I wouldn't consider it a clone unless the mother plant was a clone.

Originally Posted by IngieBee

It just sounded weird

It's Weird Ski-ence!

[Ray]

One more aspect might be applying the word "clone" when it should be "cultivar".

"Cultivar" can apply to all asexually propagated copies, not just cloned ones.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Ray

One more aspect might be applying the word "clone" when it should be "cultivar".

This is a common practice in many hort fields. I see it a lot in carnivorous plant circles, for instance. (Kind find it irksome, personally. Cultivar makes more sense to use when talking about a particular variety of a plant.)

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Paul

This is a common practice in many hort fields. I see it a lot in carnivorous plant circles, for instance. (Kind find it irksome, personally. Cultivar makes more sense to use when talking about a particular variety of a plant.)

"Cultivar" is more specific than a "variety". In the orchid world, the cultivar (the part in 'single quotes' does refer to an individual plant (whether by cloning or division). Within a seed-grown population (all of the babies have the exact same parents and are from the same pod) there can be lots of variation - size, color, vigor, etc. (Just like children of the same parents can be very different) Particular individual plants out of the population may be particularly good, and so get identified by a cultivar name to identify the exact plant. Some of them may be further propagated by cloning, and those clones would also carry the cultivar name since they are (at least theoretically) genetically identical to the source plant.

[IngieBee]

All interesting, thank you so much everyone I agree Paul that it gets confusing, but as long as the plant grows true to what is expected I'm OK with it

[Orchid Whisperer]

A clone is "an organism or cell, or group of organisms or cells, produced asexually from one ancestor or stock, to which they are genetically identical."

Regardless of whether it is a division, keiki, stem propagation, or cloned from meristem tissue (a mericlone), if the process is asexual, and results in genetically identical plants, those plants are clones.

For comparison, a cultivar is "a plant variety that has been produced in cultivation by selective breeding." Not every plant belonging to a cultivar will be identical. For example, Bella' is a cultivar of white-seeded bean that has been selectively bred to be resistant to multiple diseases. 'Blue Lake' is another bean cultivar. 'Better Boy' is a tomato cultivar. They have all been selectively bred to achieve relatively uniform characteristics within the cultivar. You could have orchid cultivars too, selectively bred within a grex to achieve uniform characteristics. For an explanation of grex v. cultivar, see: Grex (horticulture) - Wikipedia

To confuse things further, you can pollinate one cloned plant with another genetically identical cloned plant; the offspring will no longer be clones.

[Ray]

Sorry, OW, but that definition of "cultivar" is misleading, or at least incomplete.

Sexual reproduction of plants leads to a wide range of genetically different offspring. They are collectively known as a "grex".

When one selects a member of the grex due to its characteristics, that plant is a cultivated variety, or "cultivar". A plant that is asexually derived from that cultivar is still that cultivar. If a second plant from that same grex is selected for its characteristics, it is a different cultivar.

I am of the opinion that lumping all of the asexual reproduction methods into a single term is lazy imprecision.

If I have a division of a particular plant, I can be damned sure it is genetically identical to the original. A meristematic clone is supposed to be identical, but there may be genetic changes that can be caused by the cloning process, leading to differences from the original. That happens more often with large-volume cloning, simply because the statistics favor it.