Clones: how do you know if it's a good one?

[Ray]

One thing I have not seen mentioned (or I just missed it...) is culture.

How you grow a plant will have a significant effect on how it grows and blooms, so if you purchase a clone, and when it blooms, it's not identical to the awarded one, that may very well be on you, not a mutation in the cloning process.

First-generation clones - those derived from plants' meristematic tissue - are usually quite reliable in their "trueness" to the mother plant. The number of mutations increases as that tissue is re-, re-, replicated more and more.

What I don't know, and have never seen data to support one way or another, is if the rate of mutation increases, or if the sheer number becomes so great that more are seen.