Thanks, Al, and that certainly makes sense and could explain the weird
combination of characteristics found here.
Thanks again
Gary

"al" wrote in message news:s8vyh.3258$6P4.1490@trnddc06...
"apomixis" is the word I think you are looking for, K Barrett. It is
asexual reproduction from unfertilized egg or pollen cells. Some species
of
plants do it as a natural alternative to sexual reproduction; forming a
natural clone of the parent plant. It must have some evolutionary
advantage just not as strong an advantage as sexual reproduction...or
there
would be more of it. I have heard it said that zygopetulums may do this.

http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/content/full/13/7/1491

It is NOT the same thing as self fertilizing where the pollen from a plant
fertilizes the egg from the same plant.

I think what happens with apomixis is that the cells reduce to form egg or
pollen cells with half the normal gene compliment but then for some reason
double and recombine to form a complete set of chromosomes homozygous for
all traits and then somehow the cell get triggered into growth. I
suspect it is rather uncommon in orchids (I think I just read 400 plant
species) but we by preference flask green
capsules of immature embryos and the chemicals/process we use may initiate
the apomixtic development in some of the unfertilized eggs we sew. So
maybe
it is more common in captive bred orchids than in wild ones.

A hybrid intergeneric orchid embryo could conceivably perform this natural
magic,
however what would the offspring look like? Maybe the parent and other
apomitic siblings.
(Is that right? Each egg contains unique
genes and each pollen cell contains unique genes otherwise all bothers and
sisters would look the same anyway....) Over many generations of apomixes
the
natural variability from sexual reproduction is lost but a stable and
successful surviving offspring organism is left to copy itself from
generation to
generation so over the long run each surviving line would look like clones
of the parent. Speculation only... Shut up Al.


"K Barrett" wrote in message
. ..
Sometimes plants self fertilize. There's a fancy word for this. Just
the
interference with the reproductory organs makes a pod set which turns
out
to
be a selfing rather than a cross. I always thought this would turn out
a
false pregnancy, ie a pod filled with chaff. But a friend of mine had
this
happen a couple of times to a few of his crosses. Now don't quote me.
I'm
only barely remembering this and (as usual) I'm probably wrong or off
base.
Someone will fill us in on the right term for this and set me straight.
K Barrett