Species -vs- Hybrid?

[HighSeas]

I have read multiple threads vaguely mentioning characteristics between "species" and "hybrids".

I was wondering if someone could be more specific? Are there Pro's and Con's? Are there characteristics that one enjoys over another? How can you tell by the label, the difference between one and another?

Thank you for helping me to understand this better!

[silken]

The hybrids are sometimes thought to have more vigor than many species and often combine good qualities from both parents. They are often bred for larger flatter flowers, more temperature tolerance etc. The species are the natural ones that were taken from the wild and bred with other species to produce the many hybrids we have these days. They can sometimes be a little harder to grow because they may come from a specific region and need those requirements to grow well. by combining a cool grower with a warm grower for example, you often get an intermediate hybrid that is not so picky. Having said that many species are wonderful and not hard to grow at all.

The species are listed with a small letter at the start of their name whereas the hybrids use a capital letter. So C. percivaliana is a species and Lc. Canhamiana is a hybrid made from crossing 2 or more species.

I hope that helps and I'm sure others can add more info.

[RJSquirrel]

Hybrids are bred for vigor, year round blooming or having multiple blooms, smaller and maybe more of those blooms, or larger with less blooms, they are bred to blend colors and to cancel others out, to accentuate a shape or to fuse a palette of color and patterns. Breed in spots and cut out the stripes etc etc. Short Cool growing and tall warm growing plants are crossed with each other to give you medium growing plants that are sometimes more compact and take up less space and are easier to grow in the home environment. Where ever our homes are anyway.
the orchid world is just about endless when you figure in hybrids and what they have done with them over the years.
which leads to the purity of a species. you accept them for what they are and are not. you learn how to grow them rather than just keep them alive. they seem to deserve more pride in growing. You cant DNA test a hybrid and figure out what it is exactly, you can always test a species to be true or false. And why names are changing in the species world leading to hybrid names being changed is due to DNA and species testing.
which ever you choose I don't see them as having pros and cons. I just view them differently in how you have to approach them. you can manipulate either a hybrid or a species given a consistent environment and time. I have both and enjoy them just the same but on the other hand I find more pride in my species that do well bec people always say they are harder to grow

[MattWoelfsen]

This is a very good discussion. I have recently become a Neofinetia fanatic. This branch of orchidom is very specific of its plant being species. It seems very rare to get plants from two different named Neofinetia and when one is available it doesn't seem to be as expensive as either parent. I suppose that is more of a tradition and how it is done that dictates how desirable a species Neofinetia is versus a hybrid. Furthermore, as tradition dictates value, it also enables owners to compare plants that they have with each other now, but also with past Neofinetia owners.

[HighSeas]

Thank you all so much! That was enlightening! I'll assume the species have been around for many thousands of years....and evolved...whereas a "hybrid" may be only 20 years old? (Due to recent creation and/or techniques improving)

THAT said....I see that quite a few people are interested in pollinating, flasking, crossing. Doesn't that in itself somewhat contaminate the work of the original breeder and/or lend to many hybrids who don't even have a name?

[silken]

Originally Posted by HighSeas

Thank you all so much! That was enlightening! I'll assume the species have been around for many thousands of years....and evolved...whereas a "hybrid" may be only 20 years old? (Due to recent creation and/or techniques improving)

THAT said....I see that quite a few people are interested in pollinating, flasking, crossing. Doesn't that in itself somewhat contaminate the work of the original breeder and/or lend to many hybrids who don't even have a name?

Back in the early days that is how hybridizing orchids came about. Orchid growers were experimenting and trying to improve on the characteristics of the parents. Anyone can register their new cross so long as someone else hasn't already done so. Until then, yes it remains un-named! That's one reason why we have some NOID orchids. However you can make a cross and grow and show it and keep track of its parents but not name it. Then if you win an award, it would have to be named to be entered into the AOS records and it would need a clonal name as well.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by HighSeas

I'll assume the species have been around for many thousands of years....and evolved...whereas a "hybrid" may be only 20 years old? (Due to recent creation and/or techniques improving)

Not necessarily. Species is a rank of classification given to a group of plants that, in the wild, can maintain a stable set of characteristics because there is little/no hybridisation with plants from different groups that might otherwise introduce new characteristics into that group of plants (ie gene flow). When we take any plant from that species and bring it into cultivation it is still classified within that same species. There can be a lot of variation within the characteristics that define a single species and, as humans love to tweak nature to 'make it better', orchid breeders often cross orchids within a species to select some of the more desirable traits. So long as the breeder uses plants classed as the same species (intraspecific hybridisation) the resulting seedlings are still classified as belonging to the same species as the parents even if they look nothing like the plants you'd find in the wild. Actually many of the more popular species in cultivation these days look nothing like typical wild examples of the species.

The term hybrid usually refers to interspecific hybrids which are produced by crossing parents of different species. However, the defining hybrids as artificial and species as natural is a dubious distinction at best. Most people growing the species Catts, Phals, Cyms, Paphs etc probably have a good proportion of plants in their collection that are as heavily hybridised as the average hybrid!

Originally Posted by HighSeas

THAT said....I see that quite a few people are interested in pollinating, flasking, crossing. Doesn't that in itself somewhat contaminate the work of the original breeder

In a way, yes, but the point is to improve on the plants produced by the original breeder. Granted some rank amateurs cross plants willy nilly without thinking about what they're trying to achieve with the cross and their results will ultimately reflect this but good breeders have a carefully planned out strategy for breeding plants with the traits they want. I guess experience helps you find out who is worth watching and buying from.

Originally Posted by HighSeas

and/or lend to many hybrids who don't even have a name?

So long as the names of the parents are known the hybrids can be registered and, even if the breeder decides not to initially register it, any further hybrids using those plants can be named with the string of parents that produced the cross, ie A x (B x C), until a seedling is produced that makes registering all of the crosses in the seedling's parentage worth while. It's only when the names of an orchid's parents are not known (ie a NOID) you get problems with questionable names.

Originally Posted by MattWoelfsen

It seems very rare to get plants from two different named Neofinetia and when one is available it doesn't seem to be as expensive as either parent. I suppose that is more of a tradition and how it is done that dictates how desirable a species Neofinetia is versus a hybrid.

The parents of Neofinetia falcata seedlings are just as hybridised and tweaked as the seedlings. The reason for the decreased price for the seedlings is that the parents have proved themselves to be good plants and are therefore a more desirable. Seedlings are still somewhat of a crapshoot as to whether they'll be any good or not so they can't command as high a price. It's the same as trying to buy a division of any awarded stud plant from a breeder vs a seedling from that plant.

[WhiteRabbit]

Dog (canis familiaris) - species
Gray wolf (canis lupus) - species

The resulting progeny of a crossing of the two - (wolf-dog) hybrid.

Hybrids do occur naturally in some instances - including some orchids.

[Kevin_PR]

Growing species orchids can also mean that you would have to wait for a plant to go through an annual cycle to get a bloom, but many hybrids just keep on blooming, without regard to their parents natural cycles. Especially in intergenerics. I am a species grower. There are times when I will get a flush of flowers and times when there is hardly anything blooming.

[tropterrarium]

Natural hybrids do occur and once in a while will also lead to speciation-by-hybridization, which then makes the evolutionary tree not strictly splitting, but with some meshwork (reticulate evolution). VERY difficult to prove, though!

Re combining the terms "hybrid" and "vigor", this may lead to some confusion. In genetics the term "hybrid vigor" = heterosis refers to crossing two strongly inbred lineages of the *same* species, and the resultant offspring have greater fitness (better growth/survival and/or better reproductive output). Inbred lines show inbreeding depression, which can be an issue in line-breeding. To remove the inbreeding depression, a breeder may chose to put in some fresh "blood" into the plant line by crossing it with a plant from a different line of the same species.

Nowadays, mericloning (tissue culture of meristematic tissue ~ stem cells of plants) can overcome the limitation of line breeding.

Although hybrids may have better performance in human culture, it does not mean that they are superior overall. Species have evolved over long times to perform optimally in their native habitat, and have maximized "fitness" (lifetime reproductive success: can be expressed mathematically as lx x mx x e^-rt = survival probability at time x times reproductive output at time x times Euler's number (e) to the power of the intrinsic growth rate of the species). Most hybrids will fare worse in nature than the species over evolutionary time. Hybrids may be more tolerant of human abuse, but I don't see that as a justification for abusing our plants. Rather provide the right environment for the species, and they will thrive.

Obviously, I'm a species grower.