Sunset Valley 2023 Cattleyas

[OrchidLoverCA]

I just received the plants I ordered from their 2023 Cattleya's catalogue and, as always, I am super-happy with the orchids I received.
SVO is one of the best sellers. Very reliable. Good packaging. Super-quick delivery. Professional customer service. High quality plants. They never disappoint!

[DirtyCoconuts]

i missed this sale but these look like some really cool crosses.

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

i missed this sale but these look like some really cool crosses.

The plants are public now.

I got a bunch of 4n ones.

SVO 9882 Sc. Beaufort (C. luteola 'Yes a 4n' x Soph. coccinea 'SVO' AM/AOS)
SVO 9735 Lc. NEW HYBRID (Lc. Jalapa 'Ruben's Pick' 4N x C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' AM/AOS)
SVO 9769 Epc. Atomic Kyoguchi (Epc. Kyoguchi 'M. Sauno' Mutation x C. aurantiaca 'Gold Country' 4n)
SVO 9831 Kir. NEW HYBRID (Slc. Jungle Elf 'Cheryl Lynn' 4n x Epc. Kyoguchi 'M. Sano' Mutation)
SVO7997t C. schilleriana (C. schilleriana 'Blue Green' x C. schilleriana 'Blue Moon') treated

As for Leoloddiglossa, I don't know... It looks just like amethystoglossa to my uncultured eyes. I'm guessing the loddigesii contributed some of that pale blue color, but... hmm

I swear there was a mossiae somewhere in there, but it sold out fast.

Lastly, I found one thing to nitpick about one of my favorite vendors. Fred's labeling for 4n plants in the descriptions are rather inconsistent. It becomes hard to tell whether a plant is 2n, 3n, or 4n if one doesn't pay attention and cross-reference everything.

[Louis_W]

Originally Posted by katsucats

As for Leoloddiglossa, I don't know... It looks just like amethystoglossa to my uncultured eyes. I'm guessing the loddigesii contributed some of that pale blue color,

Lastly, I found one thing to nitpick about one of my favorite vendors. Fred's labeling for 4n plants in the descriptions are rather inconsistent. It becomes hard to tell whether a plant is 2n, 3n, or 4n if one doesn't pay attention and cross-reference everything.

I beleive that all parents in the leoloddiglossa are coerulea which would seemongly reduce the influence of the dark tigrinas (leoplodii).

Regarding the ploidy I have been curious about this as well. I dont think there is any rule that a grower must disclose ploidy, and in fact there may be a long tradition of keeping it secret for the sake of maintaining breeding lines. Furthermore, many polyploids may be undetected. I do agree that it is unethical to knowingly lie about stuff like that but personally I have a high level of trust in SVO.

Also Fred treats and converts plants constantly so he has many of the same hybrids with the same parents which have not been converted. This leads to siblings that are tetraploid and diploid. I suspect that this is the source lf confusion here. These plants would appear exactly the same on the tag except the (4n) so you cannot assume that all of one hybrid are polyploids. The same is true with clones. You can convert clones so the plant will be exactly the same but with a doubled genome. I dont think Fred does this very much but I could be wrong..

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by Louis_W

Also Fred treats and converts plants constantly so he has many of the same hybrids with the same parents which have not been converted. This leads to siblings that are tetraploid and diploid. I suspect that this is the source lf confusion here. These plants would appear exactly the same on the tag except the (4n) so you cannot assume that all of one hybrid are polyploids. The same is true with clones. You can convert clones so the plant will be exactly the same but with a doubled genome. I dont think Fred does this very much but I could be wrong..

I would expect that if a plant has a clonal/cultivar name attached, it would be functionally identical to all other plants of the same name. There are two main ways to achieve polyploidy for a cultivar. The first involves selfing it and treating it with a chemical like colchicine or oryzalin, in which the resulting plant is clearly a new plant and shouldn't have the same cultivar name attached. The second involves a spontaneous mericlone mutation. Usually, this is noted and the cultivar name is changed. For example, Cattleya Leoloddiglossa 'Exotic Orchids' AM/AOS mutated and was renamed Cattleya Leoloddiglossa 'Diamond Orchids', and a mutation of Epc. Kyoguchi is usually noted with 'M Sauno' Mutation.

Fred does this, which you could see in his catalog if you do a search for 'M Sauno'. But he does not do it consistently. There are a lot of vendors that won't note polyploidy status either because they don't know it or don't care to provide the information. But Fred obviously knows it and cares when it suits the description.

For example on the Compact Cattleya page, if you read the title for SVO 9735 Lc. NEW HYBRID (Lc. Jalapa 'Ruben's Pick' 4N x C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' AM/AOS), you wouldn't be blamed for thinking that it's 3N (4N x 2N). But the description says C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' AM/AOS is a tetraploid, making this hybrid 4N.

C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' AM/AOS is also used in 2 other crosses:
SVO 9651 Blc. NEW HYBRID (Lc. Sagarik Wax 'African Beauty' AM/AOS x Blc. Cherry Suisse ‘Kauai' HCC/AOS)
SVO 9665 Bc. Estrella del Aconquija (B. perrinii 'SVO' x C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' AM/AOS)

and numerous times in the catalogs of other years. Its tetraploidy is not mentioned anywhere else. That means if you don't pay attention, you could buy B. perrinii x C. Chocolate Drop and get a 3N plant inadvertently if for some reason you don't want a 3N, whether on principle or you plan to breed them (they're usually sterile). You wouldn't know that unless you read the description of SVO 9735 in 2023

Another example is Sc. Beaufort 'Big Circle', which is noted as being 4N in 4 out of the 7 crosses that it's in this year.

I don't think it's anything nefarious. In some of the crosses 'Big Circle' was noted as being 4N, the other parent wasn't, making those grexes 3N. So it's not as if Fred is only mentioning them for 4N progeny. It's just that when he writes the descriptions, I'm guessing he mentions it if it comes up in his mind. SVO 9703 Slc. Jillian Lee (Sl. Orpetii 'Hidden Treasure 4n' AM/AOS x Sc. Beaufort 'Big Circle') is 4N, but it sounds like it's 3N from the title and description. I'm assuming it would sell slightly better if people actually know that it's 4N.

There are numerous of these littered throughout the catalog, where one year he'll mention a plant being a tetraploid, and then next year you find the same cultivar in a completely innocuous looking cross that's actually a 3N or 4N, but it isn't mentioned anywhere. I end up having to do a Google search of every cultivar name to get a best estimate.

SVO isn't the only vendor to do this. I saw in a couple sites that L. anceps 'Mendenhall' is tetraploid, but it isn't consistently mentioned. In fact, there's a whole story about it being mutated from a mericlone in the 90s. But Carter and Holmes, the progenitor of 'Mendenhall' cultivars, doesn't even list it as 4N on their own website, despite naming their C. bicolor 'Mendenhall-Beta' as 4N.

It's just one of those weird things to care about. Some people do and some people don't.

To be clear, I think it would be a cause for concern if he's calling C. Chocolate Drop 'SVO' a tetraploid in one listing, but a diploid in another. So I don't think he's doing that. I don't think he's only selling converted tetraploids in listings where it's mentioned and that the same clonal names are not in listings where it's not. I think that would be deceptive, not just forgetting or neglecting to note polyploidy. I have good reason to think that at least in some examples, he's not doing this. In the SVO 9703 Jillian Lee example above, it would make no sense if he is using a 2N version of 'Big Circle', yet still calling it a reciprocal cross of another 4N listing.

[Roberta]

If it is SVO and you want to know these fine points, just ask. Fred will share what he knows, not possible to always put the whole story on a tag.

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by Roberta

If it is SVO and you want to know these fine points, just ask. Fred will share what he knows, not possible to always put the whole story on a tag.

It takes him a few days to get back to me, which was a no-go for the presale. For these things, I can do some light research and find out what I'm looking for, but if I still had any concerns, I definitely would have asked.

Probably one thing that's interesting (slightly, because I don't plan on breeding any time soon) is that he sells an SVO 3438 Bl. Yellow Bird (3N Breeder) in his Cattleya divisions list. I wonder if "3N Breeder" means that it's a triploid bridge that makes 4Ns when crossed with a 2N, as mentioned here: Frontiers | Triploid cultivars of Cymbidium act as a bridge in the formation of polyploid plants

I'll ask him some time, just out of curiosity.

[Roberta]

Occasionally, a 3n can breed, most are sterile but not all. Like the rest of genetics, not always straightforward. Two most useless words in English are "always" and "never"

[Louis_W]

If a clone is converted to polyplody does it have to loose its cultivar name?

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by Louis_W

If a clone is converted to polyplody does it have to loose its cultivar name?

I would think so. For example, Laelia anceps 'Mendenhall' AM/AOS (1991) was a spontaneous mutation of anceps 'Irwins' AM/AOS (1976). But more importantly, it's not that common to find a mutated mericlone, or else every vendor would do it for every clone, and it would not be such a story when one is found. To do so, someone would have to mericlone probably hundreds to thousands of a cultivar, and then test for polyploidy. As far as I can tell, this is done several ways:

1. By sight, judging from flower and plant traits, though this is not reliable, and someone should not just call a plant "4n" because they think it might be. For example, in Peter's (of Diamond Orchids) catalog, he describes "Cattleya Leolodiglossa 'Exotic Orchids mutant' x self" as "a selfing of my mutant, maybe 4n".
2. By crossing each mericlone suspected to be mutated with a known 4N plant, then crossing the progeny. If a clone is 4N, then crossed with a 4N, the progeny is 4N, and it should have no problem producing seeds. If a clone is 2N, then crossed with a 4N, the progeny is 3N, and it would usually produce not many if any seeds.
3. By using an expensive microscope, taking a number of cell samples, and counting the chromosomes. I believe it was said that the University of Hawaii took several hours to confirm just one tetraploid. These microscopes (e.g. Keyence BZ-X800) cost $50,000 and require expertise to use.

I think even if someone keeps a clonal name with a mutation, to use the same name back to back to describe both the original clone and the mutated clone would be downright confusing. An upstanding vendor should reasonably realize that this practice would be misleading, and improve his communication skills, in my opinion.

Note: I'm not an expert. Everything I said was from second-hand research online, which may not always be reliable. Take it with a grain of salt.