Yes! Apomixis is the term I was looking for. Thanks Al. And thanks for
your thoughts. I always took this sort of thing as further evidence that
orchids arose from the DNA found in meteorites from Mars that landed
(conveniently) in the Amazon Basin, bending lower life forms to their will
until certain Euopean landed gentry (etiolated by years of aristocratic
inbreeding) came under their spell and from whence they took over the earth.
Verrrry clever!

In looking at the cross, however, I don't think this could be a case of
apomixis becasue the Neo falcata is the pollen parent, (right?) and if
'virgin birth' happened here it would have had to have happened in the pod
parent... the Meda Arnold. Unless the cross was written wrong on Gary's tag
to begin with. (Poorthing would really be a crazy mixed up kid then,
wouldn't it?)

More likely its an error in record keeping on the part of the hybridizer, a
mistake with the toothpick, or just another example of genetic segregation
tending more towards one parent than the other.... odd that very little of
Meda Arnold came thru, still....

K Barrett, signing off.


"V_coerulea" wrote in message
...
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