why no mini mark pollen crosses and other thing
 

ok, as the title suggest, im curious about why the mini mark has no pollen donor crosses in its lineage. so from what i learned years ago about rose breeeing, and what im learning now with orchids I can only speculate on the cause. can anyone say what the reason is behind this?

additionally, i just read an older post in here about some recessive traits that caused a cross to look basically like one of the parents, just smaller. it would be cool if you guys with more experience might weigh in on if this cross we r thinking about doing is worth proceeding with. what can you tell us about the breeding habits of both the mini mark and phal taenialis? school us! thanks for any info hahahah....

I can't comment on this plant specifically, only on orchid breeding generally:

If you attempt crosses with closely related parents, you will have a moderate rate of success. If you attempt more speculative 'distant' pairings, the rate drops dramatically.

I just checked my hybridizing log. Out of 96 crosses attempted since Oct 2020, I have approx. 14 pods coming along.

Phal Mini Mark was registered in 1992, so there has been plenty of time for breeders to try it out. It is possible that:

• Breeders do not see any prospects for improvement.
• They have tried it, and the results were not encouraging.
• The plant might be sterile, and thus unable to produce offspring.

Mini Mark is half philippinensis. It is possible that the hybridizer had a tetraploid philippinensis making Mini Mark a triploid. Triploids are usually pollen sterile.

There is no way to definitely know.

There are now many new M/M in Europe.
Here is one : Phalaenopsis Minimark | Orchideen-Wichmann.de - Highest horticultural quality and experience since 1897

great info, thank you! this is the sort of technical info im after to help learn about these particular cultivars. is anyone in academia doing genetics research with any of these varieties does anyone know?

a related question, how in the heck do you make that rhs search function work?! like what do we need to type where to find these species? i think it was mrfakename that posted a link to the mini mark on there, but trying to use it myself i can’t get any results from other species.

---------- Post added at 10:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 AM ----------

yes, it does appear to be in stock at pretty much all the major suppliers right now....we got ours from schwerter....

i hate to downtype growers online, but for what it’s worth the schwerter and roelke orders have been really great. the plants we’ve gotten from wichmann are truly excellent, but the medium has almost every time had tons of insects, and recently we found snails in some from them. just fyi if anyone is ordering from germany

I honestly doubt it. Counting chromosomes is very laborious and tedious. It takes a lot of time and chemicals that aren't easy to obtain. Also, while popular in the hobby, plants like Mini Mark are mostly unknown outside us hobbyists, so there is little incentive to count it.

At one time some hobbyists were active at doing some chromosome counts. You can find an old list of those at the bottom of THIS article from Big Leaf Orchids. There have been a few added to it that are not on the list, but again not much is being done with it these days.

One note... some retailers (one in particular) likes to advertise some of their Phals as 4N, but honestly, they have no way of knowing. They guess by looking at certain characteristics that are common of tetraploids, and they might be right, but the plants haven't been counted. In fact, one cultivar they sold as 4N was counted years back, and it was definitely found to be 2N. It is used as a way to increase sales.

I hope that helps some.

I mostly use THIS page when I do research on the RHS. Scroll down to the "Search by Grex name" Then you'd enter Phal in the first blank and "Mini Mark" in the second.

If you have a good microscope, it shouldn't be that hard to do chromosome counts. I think root tip material is commonly used.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=how...ot+tips&ia=web

A biology or agronomy professor at a nearby university would probably be happy to teach you how.

Having read many comments over the years of people who were actively doing it, it isn't as easy as just looking at the chromosomes through a microscope. Chemicals have to be obtained to stain the chromosomes and those chemicals aren't easy for most people to acquire. Slicing and preparing the tissue can be challenging to do it correctly. You have to extract the root tip tissue when it is actively growing which you might not know. You have to search many cells to find one that is in exactly the correct phase (metaphase I believe) of chromosome division so that you can count them, otherwise, they are just invisible strings. Chromosomes are not flat and laid out easily so you can count them. Cell nuclei are 3D and chromosomes can be at multiple depths requiring constant focusing and refocusing.

It seems straightforward when you are reading a paper, but the actual execution, especially if you don't have a lab, is not so easy.

Note... Phal Mini Mark is a hybrid, not a species. The RHS registry search for hybrids is quite unfriendly. You'll get much more information, a lot easier, from OrchidRoots Photos as well as pedigree information, and search is a lot more forgiving. For species, Internet Orchid Species Photo Encyclopedia is a very comprehensive go-to source. (There are lots of places for more info about particular groups of species, but IOSPE gives you a thumbnail summary of the vast majority of the family of orchid species. There are somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 orchid species in the world, IOSPE has entries for 23,695 of them at the moment and still growing)

wow, thank you all a ton for the great articles and info! a few more pieces of the puzzle. thanks ben for that species list, although it woulda been super sweet if one of these exact cultivars was on it, hahahah!

also, Roberta, the orchid roots site is nice as well, thanks. at least it makes it a bit easier to id lineages quickly, and then lead to other sources for specifics. it certainly is way easier to use than the rhs search. what’s up with that?? you would think such a group might be better resourced...but, i guess it’s plants so always a fringe group, eh?