what’s the deal here?

[camille1585]

Thank you Mr.F and Fairorchids for the thorough explanation!

But if they are so difficult to propagate, how do the big commercial nurseries do it? Bulldog type Paphs and Paph Pinocchio can be regularily found in garden centers, (and not expensive) so they must have ways of reliably cloning them, right?

[Mr.Fakename]

The key is keeping it simple.

When you just need a standard "good enough" plant for mass production, you can use one that grew from seed and still is in flask, as it is sterile already.
Then it's relatively easy to use root rips or young leaves to induce a callus, and regenerate plantlets from it.

A well maintained callus can go on forever, technically being able to produce an infinite number of clones.

When you have the plant material, the appropriate media and culture techniques, making more plants at an affordable price is a formality.

[tmoney]

well, this has been most informative. thanks for the interesting info....

[Roberta]

I strongly suspect that the Paphs, even the generic ones, are seed-grown.

[SouthPark]

This discussion here is interesting ------ link.