"Eric Hunt" spaketh thusly:

Yes, there is an enormous amount of natural variation in non-mericloned
species and hybrids. That's why mericloning is so popular - people get
exactly the same thing over thousands of plants.

Not to quibble, but while getting the exact same thing from a
plant propagated from meristematic tissue is *supposed* to be what you
get, this is not always the case. As a function of improper (and sometimes
even "good") lab technique, mutations may occur, and be passed along to
the progeny. Accordingly, thousands or tens of thousands of plants (or
more) may contain these mutations, which will not be discovered until the
plant flowers. With orchids, of course, this can take years.

I think it was a few years ago on the OGD list (then the OLD list)
that one of the growers for Stewart's confessed that their labs had gotten
a little clone-happy with one particular cultivar, and subsequent
propagules proved to be highly (if not entirely) resistant to flowering.
As a result, a large number of people ended up with plants that would, in
all likelihood, never flower for them.

While asexual propagules formed under more ideal conditions (stem
props, divisions, etc.) may not have these problems, those that are
produced from heavy-handed laboratory techniques certainly may, and should
be a consideration.

As for the original query- depending upon the species (or hybrid),
there can be remarkable variability. Occasionally, it is difficult to
classify a given flower as a variety, or an entirely new species. As a
result of this, the proclamation of a "new" paph species should always be
taken with some degree of skepticism.


The e-mail address in the header doesn't work. Sorry.

-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ