Selfing to achieve 4N breeders

[GirlGoneWild]

Originally Posted by isurus79

With 4n parents its REALLY obvious! I bought a suspected 4n (colchicine treated) Catt. dowiana rosita seedling from Alan Koch recently and he brought me one (from California to Texas) that is a MONSTER compared to anything I've ever seen at that age!! lol The leaves really are thick and stiff as cardboard! I can't wait to see it bloom in few years.

You know, I have a NOID phal that I swear is a Brother Lawrence, which is a 4N (I'm not sure if every single one is, but I've seen many of them advertised as such). I got it at a clearance store that buys orchids from quality sellers, and they pull all the identifying tags out so they can sell them cheap (which is REALLY annoying, btw. I'm certain I have some quality plants in my collection, and I think many are actual clones of well-known varieties, but ID'ing them is never certain when you have a NOID.)

Anyway, this plant has the stiffest leaves I've ever seen, and it is a spitting image of a Brother Lawrence. At first I sort of thought, "Nah, it will be impossible for me to ID this for sure," but when I read that Brother Lawrence is a 4N, with stiffer leaves, I thought there might actually be a chance for an ID.

Now that I'm reading what you guys are writing about the characteristics of a 4N plant, I'm pretty darn sure I can go ahead and tag this one a Brother Lawrence.

I've never seen a phal with leaves like this...just like you said...stiff as cardboard. They don't feel anything like any of my other phals' leaves. And they sort of stick out very stiffly from the plant instead of draping like the others.

Of course, I would never actually SELL this plant officially as a Brother Lawrence or use it for breeding purposes (although I'd sure as heck like to!)...because I'll never know for SURE, but as far as my own peace of mind goes, yeah, I'm 100% sure it's a Brother Lawrence. I'm going to stick a tag in just to make myself feel better! LOL

At any rate, it's good to hear that 4n + 4n = 4n. Once again, I must have been reading something online that was just confusing me as far as the frequency of mutations.

Gosh, I'm excited about the possibilities of a 4n breeding line!! I was literally lying wide awake in bed at 4 a.m. last night thinking about all the awesome crosses that could come out of 4n parents...if we could all pool our resources and find ways to check ploidity, we could make some kickass, ground-breaking crosses!!! The possibilities are endless!!

[orchidsarefun]

Physical characteristics are not a sure-fire way.
Queen Beer ( 3N ) has leaves like cardboard - 1st photo
Orchid World ( 3N ) has vigorous growth - 2nd photo
I'm with Rob : it may work with certain hybrids, but obviously not generally.

[orchidsarefun]

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[Call_Me_Bob]

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

Physical characteristics are not a sure-fire way.
Queen Beer ( 3N ) has leaves like cardboard - 1st photo
Orchid World ( 3N ) has vigorous growth - 2nd photo
I'm with Rob : it may work with certain hybrids, but obviously not generally.

im aware that they arent a sure-fire way. i was just saying that its a characteristic that most 4n have. not saying its exclusive to 4n plants; nor am i suggesting thats how we should test for 4n plants.

[FairyInTheFlowers]

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

Your John Ewing is interesting in that its offspring has no registered offspring ( like Orchid World ) - so its indicative of a ploidy issue. BUT MAYBE the colchicine has "corrected" this. The experiment is definitely worthwhile.

Lol, first, the main reason that John Ewing has no F2 offspring is because all but one of them appear to be crosses with 4n's or crapaploids. All but Miller's Bridge (x violacea) would have been dead-ends. Second, John Ewing is (George Vasquez x venosa), so there is pretty much no way it could have ploidy issues. Third, Patrick has some other crosses of his own with John Ewing as the pollen parent to other irrefutable diploids.

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

BUT MAYBE the colchicine has "corrected" this. The experiment is definitely worthwhile.

I don't know if this would work. As far as I'm concerned, the highest stable ploidy is and 6n (a certain cultivar or Phal. Doris is one of those). This next part is all theoretical and assuming that aneuploid chromosome divisions follow simple math. If a person were to get some viable seed from a 3n x 2n cross, and then successfully double those, you would get a pentaploid (5n), or something near that assuming that there is some variety in the way that the 3n chromosomes reduce. The gametes of the 3n would be approximately 1.5n, and those of the 2n would be an perfect 1n. Mix those together and you get something around the 2.5n range, and doubling would land you near 5n. These would without a doubt be even more sterile and difficult to breed, as I doubt you would get perfect 5n, which means that in chromosome reduction to form gametes, you would get numbers like 2.55n or 2.45n.

[FairyInTheFlowers]

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

Physical characteristics are not a sure-fire way.
Queen Beer ( 3N ) has leaves like cardboard - 1st photo
Orchid World ( 3N ) has vigorous growth - 2nd photo
I'm with Rob : it may work with certain hybrids, but obviously not generally.

Queen Beer may be 4n, as I know there are 4n pulcherrima out there.

I don't know if I wasn't clear, but I would only use physical characteristics when comparing treated seedlings of an absolute 2n cross to untreated seedlings from the exact same pod.

[FairyInTheFlowers]

Originally Posted by Call_Me_Bob

im aware that they arent a sure-fire way. i was just saying that its a characteristic that most 4n have. not saying its exclusive to 4n plants; nor am i suggesting thats how we should test for 4n plants.

Also agreed that these characteristics aren't segregated to 4n's only, but if you were to compare a 4n species or hybrid to a 2n from the same pod, I think it can be almost guaranteed that the 4n will be larger and more robust. One of the best examples of this is in this thread: C. walkeriana 'Tokyo #1'. Here a member of the forum posted a picture of her diploid walkeriana 'Tokyo #1' and a chance 4n that appeared from meristemming. This means the two plants are genetically identical (well, the 4n obviously has double the chromosomes, but they are identical nonetheless) grown under the same conditions. Seeing this makes me even more sure that it will be pretty easy to pick 4n's out of a batch when comparing them to 2n siblings.

[orchidsarefun]

Originally Posted by Call_Me_Bob

im aware that they arent a sure-fire way. i was just saying that its a characteristic that most 4n have. not saying its exclusive to 4n plants; nor am i suggesting thats how we should test for 4n plants.

Bob - comment was meant for GirlGoneWild when she said

"Now that I'm reading what you guys are writing about the characteristics of a 4N plant, I'm pretty darn sure I can go ahead and tag this one a Brother Lawrence.

I've never seen a phal with leaves like this...just like you said...stiff as cardboard. They don't feel anything like any of my other phals' leaves. And they sort of stick out very stiffly from the plant instead of draping like the others. "

[orchidsarefun]

Originally Posted by TheBlazingAugust

Queen Beer may be 4n, as I know there are 4n pulcherrima out there.

I don't know if I wasn't clear, but I would only use physical characteristics when comparing treated seedlings of an absolute 2n cross to untreated seedlings from the exact same pod.

I crossed it 7 times - 4 to 2Ns and 3 to 4Ns. All failed.

[TxRobNLa]

Also agreed that these characteristics aren't segregated to 4n's only, but if you were to compare a 4n species or hybrid to a 2n from the same pod, I think it can be almost guaranteed that the 4n will be larger and more robust.

Unfortunately this is not true, especially in colchicine treated populations. Some of the 4ns will visually look like 2ns. We've verified this many times with counts now. There will also be enough variety in the remaining 2ns to the degree that some of the 2ns look 4n when compared to each other. Its a really messy situation unfortunately. Like so many other things in nature, things are often not black and white.

I'll try to write more tonight about why this happens.