Out of season, but still very welcome, Neo. Manjushage 曼珠沙華

[Neodex]

@Hakumin and @Shoreguy, yes I agree. I have that annoyingly curious mind that got me into science long ago. I just cannot stop speculating about how stuff works. I've become a bit hesitant to post science based speculation on forums as it can turn hobbiests off sometimes. Just because I think it's just a bit of fun, not everyone comes with that approach ... some just want to enjoy their orchids in an analysis free space, which is fair enough.

The useful side of having these discussions is that it brings ideas, experiences and information together, and even this only raises more questions, that in itself is useful. I was meaning to start a thread on variegation but never got around to posting it. The central idea is that variegation involves mutations that would be lethal if they were expressed in all cells in the leaves. The shima types and tiger types solve this problem in different ways. I'll work on this and post it sometime, because I know that you guys most likely have answers to some of my questions.

Just in case you've not come across it, there was a paper published about using Neos as a model organism to study developmental biology in plants. The reasoning was that there are so many mutations already out there. The paper was by a group led by Minsung Kim at the University of Manchester, UK.

Mutant Flower Morphologies in the Wind Orchid, a Novel Orchid Model Species.
Sascha Duttke, Nicholas Zoulias, and Minsung Kim. (2012)
Plant Physiology vol:158 pages: 1542-1547

As far as I remember the paper is open access and if you're interested in neos and haven't downloaded a copy, I highly recommend that you do. I did contact Dr. Kim but he said they were not taking this any further.

[Shoreguy]

Originally Posted by Neodex

@Hakumin and @Shoreguy, yes I agree. I have that annoyingly curious mind that got me into science long ago. I just cannot stop speculating about how stuff works. I've become a bit hesitant to post science based speculation on forums as it can turn hobbiests off sometimes. Just because I think it's just a bit of fun, not everyone comes with that approach ... some just want to enjoy their orchids in an analysis free space, which is fair enough.

The useful side of having these discussions is that it brings ideas, experiences and information together, and even this only raises more questions, that in itself is useful. I was meaning to start a thread on variegation but never got around to posting it. The central idea is that variegation involves mutations that would be lethal if they were expressed in all cells in the leaves. The shima types and tiger types solve this problem in different ways. I'll work on this and post it sometime, because I know that you guys most likely have answers to some of my questions.

No, I myself don't have answers to any of this variegation issue, just total absolute confusion.

[Hakumin]

I have read a number of papers regarding the causes of variegation, and it seems that while chimeral variegation is relatively well researched, research on non-chimeral variegation such as tora-fu as well as certain types of shima is almost non-existant.

On top of that, most of the research that has been done, has been done on on arabidopsis and other dicots. Because of the different way cells are arranged in the leaves in dicots, it makes it really difficult to really compare neo variegation with the named types of variegation seen in the arabidopsis studies. There are a bunch studies on iojap corn, but I haven't really been able to link that to any specific type of variegation in neos either.

As for the paper regarding using Neos as a model species, I have read that before, and while interesting to read, doesn't really delve into the whys of the different flower forms, and just shows a number of different types (it's not even comprehensive ). It's a good start, but I wish there was more.

And even beyond variegation and flowers themselves, there are other characteristics that would make neos interesting to research; the causes of different types dwarf leaves, what causes a tsuke to be one shape or another, what causes a plant with no tsuke, what causes characteristics like sumi, noshi-ba, koryu-ba, enbi-ba, rasha-ba, tsuya-ba etc. It really would be interesting to use Neos as a model organism because it has so many different characteristics that it has expressed in cultivation.

[Neodex]

I think there was a bit of work on chimeral variegation in Clivia. Although no one has proven that shima variegation is chimeric, it is the best guess. If anyone has shown pod only inheritance for shima phenotype then that would be at least some supporting evidence for a chimeral cause.

The non-chimeral types are more mysterious and maybe we can have a separate thread to look at these and if there exists some traditional classification of these. I will start a new thread on non-chimeral variegation in which hopefully others will contribute their observations, and hopefully Hakumin can help us with the names for these different types.