Rlc. Memoria Helen Brown 'Sweet Afton m. Splash'

[Roy]

The one thing you will need to keep in mind. 'Sweet Afton' never mericloned well. One in 10 or 20 plants flowered well. It was then selfed which produced rubbish with one or two a bit better, ie. the one you posted being one of those. This in turn was mericloned & one in 50 plants were good enough to keep. I looked back at the discussion with BD & I think it says all on the subject for a proper 'Sweet Afton'

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by Roy

The one thing you will need to keep in mind. 'Sweet Afton' never mericloned well. One in 10 or 20 plants flowered well. It was then selfed which produced rubbish with one or two a bit better, ie. the one you posted being one of those. This in turn was mericloned & one in 50 plants were good enough to keep. I looked back at the discussion with BD & I think it says all on the subject for a proper 'Sweet Afton'

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I've had extensive discussions with people within AOS about that kind of thing, and have even collected scans of film camera photos of 'Sweet Afton' from members ----- all looking just as expected - like 'Sweet Afton'.

I mentioned in my posts (earlier) about the large amount of repeated mericloning, and repeated mericloning of mericlones that occurred. Mutation due to mericloning processes did occur, so mutated plants are not Sweet Afton. Results of selfing's are not Sweet Afton. If it does turn out (after I find out) that my plant is the result of a selfing, then I'm happy to just call it Rlc. Memoria Helen Brown. I'll be absolutely happy with that. I tried to get in touch with Bruce Ah Sing ----- to increase my chances of gaining a 'Sweet Afton' flower - or one that looks as close to classic form as I can get.

The nice thing is that the 'Sweet Afton' plants at least did make it to Australia, and at least one received an AOC award.

Bruce Ah Sing, Ron-NY and Dorsetman certainly have 'Sweet Afton'. The words 'proper' and 'true-form' Sweet Afton is kind of like an over-kill on the description ----- because 'Sweet Afton' refers to plants with exact DNA match-up with the very original 'Sweet Afton'. Any plant that hasn't got identical DNA match-up (including mutations etc) is not 'Sweet Afton'. I know that you know this already. And we both know that Brutal Dreamer's plant is not Sweet Afton.

Brutal Dreamer should have done some cross-checks and verification (photos, chat to AOS etc) before wrongly putting a photo of a flower in his book 'Orchids Through Our Eyes' under the label of Blc. Memoria Helen Brown 'Sweet Afton' AM/AOS. Surprised that he doesn't ever mention that his flower looks nothing like Bruce Ah Sing's, Ron-NY's and Dorsetman's flowers --- and all Sweet Afton's that were ever awarded. I'm sure that he knows it though. It is interesting in that Brutal Dreamer ignores all posts that questions the ID of his flower/plant.

I prefer not to call any plants 'rubbish' - regardless of their form or appearance. It's not their fault that they were cloned/mericloned/grown/introduced etc. It's us humans that did it. I know what you mean though ----- as you're referring to plants that don't meet a breeder's expectations or bench-mark levels. Maybe the breeding contingent has a benign word for those plants that they consider below expectations ..... eg. use a codeword such 'b plants' or 'b grade plants'.

Originally Posted by Roy

I looked back at the discussion with BD & I think it says all on the subject for a proper 'Sweet Afton'

Totally agree with you on that one Roy. And Brutal Dreamer should have addressed Bruce Ah Sing's comments - rather than deliberately ignore him.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by Roy

'Sweet Afton' never mericloned well. One in 10 or 20 plants flowered well.

Roy ----- one question is --- what does the above suggest? Does it suggest that the majority of the plants that resulted from mericloning became mutated? That is, the majority of those mericlone (results of the mericlone procedure) plants didn't have DNA identical to Sweet Afton (and therefore the majority of those plants were not Sweet Afton)? If so, then what's the mechanism behind that? I had assumed that mericloning in general would produce plants having DNA identical to the original plant. In general.

Or do you mean that production went out of control - where labs began to clone mutants and selfings (and therefore not really mericloning Sweet Afton)?