How are created the miniature orchids?

[alessandro2011]

I'm curious, is it used some sort of bonsai technique?
Someone could describe the process used?
Or eventually post some link with a nice description?

[RJSquirrel]

miniature orchids are species or hybrids and not bonsai's. they dont need restraints to keep them small bec they are naturally small either in species form or hybrid forms. I dont think you can hold back an orchid un-naturally bec they would have nothin to do with that

[RosieC]

They are not kept small artificially, they are just orchids which naturally grow small. There is such wide variety in orchids, even in one genus that there is also a wide variety in size. My mum has a tiny tiny tiny phal that never grows bigger... that's just down to something in the parentage of the hybrid being a tiny species of phal.

[alessandro2011]

Interesting.
Exist some specific studies about that?
For example from a normal size orchids and a small size orchids which are the probabilities that came a medium size orchids? Or, instead, remain small or, on the contrary, you obtain another big size orchids?

[Ray]

Think genetics.

As was said, some plants are naturally small, and even among "standards", some will be smaller than others. Through selective breeding, one can "develop" miniatures, but as genes will be genes, some larger progeny could still emerge.

I saw a paph species a few months ago that the leaves were only 12-15 mm long, and there was a recent-spent flower on the plant!

[PaphMadMan]

Originally Posted by alessandro2011

Interesting.
Exist some specific studies about that?
For example from a normal size orchids and a small size orchids which are the probabilities that came a medium size orchids? Or, instead, remain small or, on the contrary, you obtain another big size orchids?

It is a pretty basic concept in genetics when looking at a complex trait like height that depends on many genes working together - the average height of the offspring of 2 plants will be close to the geometric mean of the heights of the parents. As an easy example, if one plant is 4cm tall and the other is 36cm tall, 4 x 36 = 144, and the square root of 144 is 12. So the offspring can be expected to average about 12cm tall. Approximately, not exactly. The same concept applies to other size related traits like flower width or spike length.

There are a couple exceptions. There can be simple dominant or homozygous recessive genes that make a big difference, throwing off the average. Or if the parents are hybrids with both large and small plants in their background you can get unexpected results.