Hi,

Agreed, but there's an even more troubling issue, which is that two
different plants may actually be grouped into the same grex under this
simplification. There are plenty of 16-20th generation hybrids, which,
if one takes a look into their genes, possess very similar genetic
demographics, and could very well be confused as the same grex if one
were not aware of the crosses with which those genes were assembled. I
have a spreadsheet set up which looks at which crosses were used to make
which plant, and traces the full lineage and calculates the genetic
makeup of a plant. There are tonnes and tonnes of plants with similar
genetic makeups (eg. ~60% amabilis, ~10% amboinensis, ~10% schilleriana,
~10% sanderiana, ~10% stuartiana). They are all different in terms of
the crosses involved, but if you gave them to a phylogenist who had no
knowledge of orchids, he would say they are all the same thing. And I
mean, since orchids breed so easily with one another to give fertile
offspring, how does one really define species, or genera for that
matter. There's one intergeneric which is a mix of 9 'true genera'.

Cheers,
Xi

Ray wrote:

Genetic mapping would be the best way to ID hybrids, but then we'd no doubt
find lots of registered hybrids that were the same, and the "same" ones that
are actually different!