Seed parent vs pod parent
 

What difference comes from a cross where orchid a is used as seed parent as opposed to pod parent? (I hope this question is clear enough)

This varies a lot, as it depends upon relative genetic dominance.

In some cases, there is virtually no difference.
In other cases, there is very significant difference.

Example No. 1: Paph. Nitens (= insigne x villosum). My dad had several hundred plants, which had been produced from several pods - made both ways.

Each plant showed the pod parent very clearly in terms of flower shape. However, 100% of the plants had insigne colors.

Example No. 2: Vandachostylis Pinky (V. falcata x Rhy. gigantea).
When falcata carries the pod, you get open, star shaped flowers and low flower count on a tiny plant.
When Rhy. gigantea carries the pod, you get fuller flowers, flower count varies (15-45) and the plant is significantly larger.

There are some traits that are passed through mitochondrial DNA from the "pod parent" (even though they are capsules in orchids), such as fertility, plant vigor, chloroplast function, and cross-compatibility.

Thanks guys. That answers my question.

Do they get different grex'es then?

No, they receive the same name in the orchid world.

---------- Post added at 01:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 PM ----------

Do you have any comparison photos? I asked this same question to some very high profile growers last year for a judging center project and mostly got responses that indicated minor differences or none at all. This is a question that I think needs to be written about in AOS Magazine.

When you write the article:biggrin:, I'd like to read it.

Maybe the difference is amplified when it's a cross between different genera?

That is an interesting thought. The question arose as I was thinking of the two parents of Papilionanthe 'Miss Joaquim'. Both species are the same genus, so I didn't think about cross-genera.

There are so many other factors that make for variation within the grex (all the different ways that genes can get combined) , I wonder whether it is even possible to tease out the differences due to choice of pod parent. Maybe if there are enough examples that can be compared side by side, it may be apparent for a given grex.(Maybe more important for some than for others) But I suspect that getting a statistically meaningful comparison for hybrids in general is impossible - one can't control for just one variable while keeping all the others the same.