Name position in the cross label

This is most likely a silly question.
Does the name position in the cross label tell you who was holding the seed pod?
For example if cross is A X B, does it mean that A had a seed pod developed?
Thanks a lot.

[ronaldhanko]

It should tell, i.e., the seed parent should be first, but not all are careful to label their plants correctly.

[RosieC]

I agree with Ron. Theoretically it tells you but you can't rely on the person who wrote the tag writing it the correct way round (or maybe someone else wrote it wrong and they just copied it).

[Bud]

It pays to be sure. I have read an orchid wiki that spelled the seed pod parent of Vanda Pachara Delight as "Korulea"...when its supposed to be "coerolea" ...
We need to go to the Royal Horticultural Society site and verify since this is the only place we can get an accurate info of names since they are the ones responsible in officially registering names of orchids.

[Merlyn]

Bud's right here's the link; The International Orchid Register / RHS Gardening

[RosieC]

However while the RHS will tell you which way round it was on the original cross it is possible for someone to remake the cross the other way around. If it's made the other way round it still has the same hybrid name so you can't necessarily tell from your hybrid name which way round it was made.

[goodgollymissmolly]

Everybody is right to some extent. In any plant cross the conventional system is to put the pod parent first. The RHS registration system puts the cross as the registrant lists it. So if the registrant does it correctly, the original cross has the pod parent first.

Unfortunately, the registration system uses the same name for any cross between the same two parents so there is no way to tell what the arrangement of a subsequent cross actually is. This leads to a maddening and unnecessary trait of the RHS system. Since it does not track pod/pollen parentage why does it only list crosses in the original manner? To see if a cross has been registered you must look up both possibilities separately.

Ideally, a system would identify the pod parent of any combination because it makes a significant difference to the outcome. The pod parent contributes both mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA to the cross and the pollen parent contributes only to the nuclear DNA.

It would be nice to start tracking the total data since we now can do it with computers. I don't expect that will happen any time soon.

Thank you everybody for the information and for the useful link. I actually tried the parentage search on that site and when I put seed parent Vanda coerulea and pollen - Vanda sanderiana - I got result Vanda rotshildiana, but when I switched them - no result was found. So the system knows and doesn't use the same name for the other way round, right?
I wish on that site in the search results you could click somewhere to expand parents of the parents down to the first generation in hierarchy.

[goodgollymissmolly]

Thank you everybody for the information So the system knows and doesn't use the same name for the other way round, right?

No that's not right. The system uses the same name for any combination of two parents.....but...it only reports the hybrid name if you input the parent's names as in the original registration. That's what I was tryingbto tell you about having to look up a cross in both parent combinations to be surebyou get a name.

Quickly ...once a hybrid is registered, any combination of the same two parents has the same grex name. However if searching by parentage, only the original combination will give you the grex name.

Originally Posted by Bud

I have read an orchid wiki that spelled the seed pod parent of Vanda Pachara Delight as "Korulea"...when its supposed to be "coerolea" ...

Bud, according to RHS - the right spelling of the seed pod parent of V. Pachara Delight is V. Karulea, which is cross of V. Kapiolea and V. coerulea.
Now I can't stop searching for all the parents of plants that I know